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The bundler task is to bundle your application assets like HTML, Javascript, and CSS, and dependencies and output into files We have a lot of web applications popular bundlers like webpack, Browserify, and rollup? then why was parcelJS introduced?. With webpack, we have a lot of configurations and complex setups. The parcel has a zero-based configuration and performance is good compared with existing bundlers.
Parcel Inbuilt features
- Fast performance as it runs the tasks in parallel using multi-core processors and caching support
- Integrated inbuilt support for javascript, CSS, HTML, images, and other UI assets. Extra Plugins are not required
- Zero or minimal configuration
- Detailed error logging mechanism
- Hot Module replacement.
Difference between ParcelJS and Webpack
| Webpack | Parcel |
|---|---|
| Complex to set up for a simple application | Easy to Setup |
| Complex configuration | Zero-based configuration |
| Default provides input and output file, Extra plugin setup required to have support HTML/CSS/scss/js/images/Es6/Typescript | Inbuilt support for HTML/CSS/SCSS/js/Images/typescript |
| You need to configure the development server. | Default supports development Server. |
| Performance is good | Best performance compared with Web pack because of caching and code-splitting features. |
| Strong community support and stability | Emerging now with active community |
Setup/Install ParcelJS in application
There are two ways we can install any web application
- Using Yarn tool
yarn global add parcel-bundler
- Using NPM tool
npm install -g parcel-bundler
To check parcelJs installation execute the below command.
B:\Workspace\parcel>parcel --version
1.9.7
Parcel Hello World Demo Application
To create an empty project, FIrst, we need to have package.json in your project home directory. To create it, Use the yarn or npm command to generate.
yarn init -y
npm init -y
It generates a package.json file as follows.
{
"name": "parcel",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "",
"main": "index.js",
"scripts": {
"test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
},
"keywords": [],
"author": "",
"license": "ISC"
}
You need to supply the entry point for the parcel command, For that create an index.html file like below.
index.html
<html>
<body>
<script src="./index.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
index.js
console.log('Parcel Testing application')
The development server is required to run this code, Parcel has an inbuilt dev server.
parcel index.html
Server running at http://localhost:1234
Built-in 1.11S
parcel commands Basic syntax:
parcel {options} {Commands}
Learn Options and commands
let’s see following command line options
Parcel Options Infomation:
--versionor-V: print Version information to console--helpor-h: Syntax information
Parcel Commands Infomation:
serve: Execute Development Server
Watch: the changes for reloading content without restarting the server
Build: Production build
What is parcel JS used for?
ParcelJS is an javascript opensource bunder, It is used to build, compile and test application in NodeJS.
It also provides various features web server, image optimization,minification.
