NodeJS Application built with Babel

Do you fancy to write a node.js app (that uses the latest and greatest Javascript syntax) and would like to build?

Babel + node.js

The application we are going to build is no React / Angular application. Hence, the use of webpack could be an overkill.

Instead let’s do it all using package.json and .babelrc

Building an application

Step 1: Create a node application

$ mkdir myserver_app
$ cd my_server_app
$ npm init -y
Wrote to ./myserver_app/package.json:
{
  "name": "myserver_app",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "",
  "license": "ISC"
}
$ mkdir src

Step 2: Add the following source code to src/server.js, package.json and .babelrc

Step 3: Once added, run npm install at the project root directory ./myserver_app.

Step 4: Now run npm start to run the project in dev mode.

Step 5: Now that our app can run in dev mode, let’s emulate a package on dist by running npm build and npm dist

How did it all work?

There are couple of pieces to have this work.

• .babel file’s @babel/plugin-transform-runtime is responsible for polyfill since Babel 7.4
  Note: Babel 7.4 started to deprecate @babel/polyfill plugin.
• .babel file’s preset is responsible for supporting modern JS functionality.
• runtime dependency of @babel/runtime . This is also required for being able to build the node application using babel.

All other things are routine NodeJS nuts and bolts.

• Express — NodeJS web application framework
• Morgan — Used for logging express
• nodemon — watches source code for rerunning.

Hopefully this article has helped with building a NodeJS app.