How to get one file as output of angular cli

Question

I'm working on ng2 application and I use @angular/cli to build it. As output it emits several js files like .inline.js, .vendor.js etc.

The question is -- how to set up angular-cli to emit only one file as a result, i.e. bundle vendor.js, inline.js etc. into one big file?

I understand that it could be done by using additional bundler but it would be nice to achieve it via ng-cli

PS I don't use lazy loading in this app and definitely won't.

PPS Just concat files afterwards is not an option because:

• it doesn't work with hash in file name, need to update html as well
• it introduces an additional build step which is not necessary

As for now it looks like moving to pure webpack would be the easiest and best option

UPDATE

there is possibility to avoid vendor.js setting --vendor-chunk to true but as a result I still get several files: inline.bundle.js main.bundle.js polyfills.bundle.js

Answer 1

Angular CLI natively doesn't support this.

There are other solutions, including further processing with other tooling after Angular CLI finishes doing its thing, but this will hinder or remove the debugging capabilities Angular provides out-of-the-box.

As the ng eject command is also being deprecated, the option to reconfigure webpack is not as attractive as it used to be. However, that is still technically a possibility.

My solution:

The best solution I have found is the ngx-build-plus plugin, which can be found at https://github.com/manfredsteyer/ngx-build-plus or added to a project via the ng add ngx-build-plus Angular-CLI command currently. Once installed, it provides additional configuration options for building, including the --single-bundle true flag that can be added to an ng build or ng serve command.

With that flag, a main.js file and a main.js.map file are created, already referenced in the HTML, and it'll just run like that properly out of the box, with full source mapping and debugging.

Answer 2

1- use the ng build --prod --output-hashing=none, which creates the files without the cash-buster ( the random hash).

2- Use cat to bundle them in one file

"build":"ng build --prod --output-hashing=none",
"package":" cat dist/angular-project/{polyfills,runtime,main}.js > ./package.js",
"bundle":"npm run build && npm run package"

And use it like :

npm run bundle

Answer 3

I have not seen any functionality in angular-cli that builds into one bundle, however, it should be fairly easy to do with a nodejs script or using one of the concat libraries available such as concat-files https://www.npmjs.com/package/concat-files

install concat-files then: add a concat.js file in your project at the same level as dist folder

var concat = require('concat-files');
concat([
    './dist/inline.bundle.js',
    './dist/vendor.bundle.js',
    './dist/vendor.bundle.js'
], './dist/app.js', function(err) {
    if (err) throw err
    console.log('done');
});

in your package.json under scripts add a new script build:

"scripts":{
    "build": "ng build && node concat.js"
}

then run it npm run build it will run the angular cli build first the run the concat.js script which will concatenate the resulting bundles

Answer 4

I can see some good attempts made using concatenating all the js files, but it might not work all the time.

To generate one single index.html that contains all js and css files, I wrote a gulp script.

Install following dependencies

npm install --save-dev gulp gulp-inline

create gulpfile.js in the root folder.

gulpfile.js:

const gulp = require("gulp");
const inline = require("gulp-inline");

gulp.task("default", () => {
  return gulp
    .src("./dist/*/*.html")
    .pipe(inline())
    .pipe(gulp.dest("./single-dist"));
});

If you run npx gulp now it will generate a folder called single-dist with just a .html file, that include all html, css and js code.

To make this process easier, you can add a npm script like this:

"build-single": "npm run build && npx gulp"

This will automatically build the angular app into a single html file.

Answer 5

On Windows you can use type instead of cat and follow a similar approach proposed by @Milad:

1: Extend the scripts in package.json

"build-prod": "ng build --prod --output-hashing=none",
"package-es5": "cd dist/app-name && type runtime-es5.js polyfills-es5.js main-es5.js > bundle-es5.js",
"package-es2015": "cd dist/app-name && type runtime-es2015.js polyfills-es2015.js main-es2015.js > bundle-es2015.js",
"bundle": "npm run build-prod app-name && npm run package-es5 && npm run package-es2015",

2: Run the bundling process

npm run bundle

3: Replace the scripts automatically added in index.html manually

<script src="bundle-es2015.js" type="module"></script>
<script src="bundle-es5.js" nomodule defer></script>

To overcome the manual step, I'm using the following workaround:

1: Create an empty placeholder.html in the same folder as index.html

2: Copy the index.html file and rename it to index.prod.html

2: Modify index.prod.html with static stylesheet and scripts

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>app-name</title>
<base href="/">

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="favicon.ico">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css"></head>
</head>
<body>

<app-root></app-root>

<script src="bundle-es2015.js" type="module"></script>
<script src="bundle-es5.js" nomodule defer></script>

</body>
</html>

4: Add index.html to the assets array in angular.json

"app-name": {
  "architect": {
    "build": {
      "options": {
        "assets": [
          "projects/app-name/src/index.html",
          ...
        ],

5: Modify the index entry in angular.json to point to placeholder.html and replace index.html with index.prod.html

"app-name": {
  "architect": {
    "build": {
      "configurations": {
        "production": {
          "index": "projects/app-name/src/placeholder.html",
          "fileReplacements": [
            {
              "replace": "projects/app-name/src/index.html",
              "with": "projects/app-name/src/index.prod.html"
            },
            ...
          ],          

Answer 6

Type:

.\\dist\\angular-project\\main.js .\\dist\\angular-project\\runtime.js .\\dist\\angular-project\\polyfills.js > .\\dist\\package.js

it's works for me.