What Is a Bundler and How Can It Help You In Your Web Development Courses?
Web development has been thriving for a long time, and it doesn’t seem like that’s going to end. Desktop applications and websites are in high demand today due to the diverse needs of businesses, students, and all internet users in general.
Take, for example, the services that offer task management tools with all the features you might need for scheduling or studies. It’s a quite competitive area, and someone has to create and support all these websites and apps. The demand is, thus, huge.
People who feel passionate about this area try to switch to it as soon as possible. So, they opt to become students again and attend extra courses instead of pursuing a degree. The process is obviously tough, especially if you didn’t deal with the IT industry before. In addition, it’s not the subject you can handle with an EssayHub essay helper just like that. However, there are certain instruments that will simplify your studies, and bundlers are on the list.
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So, What Is It?
A bundler is a tool that allows developers to delegate the process of making project dependencies organized, compatible, and minified. The thing is, websites are no longer built using simple HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
There are new analogous technologies that build on the three above, and for developers not to have a headache each time they write code, bundlers were created. They help to focus on coding actually instead of digging into all the aspects of aligning scripts and technologies. The most popular and efficient bundlers are:
- Browserify
- Parcel
- Webpack
- Rollup
- Closure
Now, let’s go through the reasons to use one of these helpers during your web development courses and, subsequently, in commercial projects. And if you’re still thinking about the other kind of helpers mentioned before, check out the essayservice.com review by NoCramming experts to get more details. It will give you some food for thought.
Structured Project
When you install a bundler, you automatically get a structured template, and the structure should be maintained. Before you learn how to customize the bundler, it will ensure that all the code is properly compiled.
There is usually a folder called ‘src’ where developers can create their own hierarchy of folders and files as they wish. When the bundler starts going through the code, it searches for the main file from which the app or website starts. It is also called an ‘entry point’ which is index.js by default.
After that, it goes through all the files in the ‘src’ folder and builds a so-called dependency tree with numerous files combined into one JavaScript file. What’s more, some bundlers have Babel built into them. This tool transpilers – ‘translates’ – the code into the older version of JavaScript for older versions of browsers to be able to read the code.
Systematized Information
When a bundler is installed into the project, it creates a package.json file that gives you the whole information about the dependencies. You can use it to:
- add scripts for loading, building, and deploying the website;
- configure the target homepage;
- check what versions of libraries are installed and so on.
That said, this file serves as a summary of the project for other computers. For instance, the node_modules folder may contain a lot of heavy files that are not needed on GitHub or in another developer’s computer. So, the node modules are set to be ignored during copying your files to a remote repository.
When another developer pulls the project to their local one, they use a command that installs all the dependencies based on the information in the package.json file. It significantly speeds up the process and prevents uploading gigabytes of unnecessary information to GitHub.
Automation
The main reason to use a bundler for web development is also the fact that it can do many actions developers used to do manually. Only with a few scripts added to package.json or a similar file (it depends on the tool), you can ensure a fast build process and set up automatic deployment of your website to GitHub, for instance.
Some bundlers even delete unused code when compiling documents into the final JS file. And that’s only one out of many ways they can optimize the code.
Live Reload
As soon as you run the start command in your terminal, the whole project builds on the so-called localhost – a simple tab in your browser. As you add some features or fix bugs, the page automatically reloads to show the changes.
Adding a Live Server plugin is also possible, just as it’s possible to install a SASS compiler and other plugins that will simplify the development process. Yet, what bundlers do is combine many plugins and launch them altogether. So, you don’t have to click here and there to make sure you’re ready to start coding. Just run the script that opens the localhost page and the rest of the features will activate automatically.
Summing Up
Bundlers are extremely useful tools when it comes to creating a fully functioning website using modern technologies. Before you dive in, make sure you practice on some test projects not to lose your data. And make sure that you read the documentation attentively to make the most of it!
What Is a Bundler and How Can It Help You In Your Web Development Courses?
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Last update on 2023-05-30 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API