Expose compiler object responsible for compiling the preact application

[robinvdvleuten]

As mentioned by #70, I started creating a reusable compiler instance responsible for building or watching a preact application. The commands are now using this compiler to generate their output. The compiler is exposed as main entry so one can use it in their own project like this;

const createCompiler = require('preact-cli');

let compiler = createCompiler(/* any options can be passed here */);

// Compile the application and optionally serve it through the dev server by passing a bool.
await compiler.compile(true);

// Return a prerendered string for the given params
compiler.prerender(/* any params passed to prerender */)

I guess this can be seen as a first step in exposing an api to built upon; like exposing the prerender functionality to render compiled preact strings in a node.js app, replacing the dev server with dev middleware so you can mount the preact-cli on your own server, etc.

[robinvdvleuten]

@developit did you manage to find some time to look at this PR? It would be great to have some sort of extendability built into this project

[developit]

Not yet, no. Hopefully someone else can review before me!

[developit]

Curious about everyone's opinions on this, but I wondered if this could have been done more directly via a closure + exported object (just a POJO factory). If everyone is good with classes I don't have a strong opinion here, just it's the first class into this codebase that isn't specifically for Webpack, so I thought I'd ask :)

[fforres]

(Can anyone make an opinion?)
The implementation looks awesome, but as a personal choice, I'd prefer non-class approaches 👍
I guess it depends on the project... are classes used in preact-cli?
If so, it could be good to keep consistency with pojo/factory approach 😃

[robinvdvleuten]

yeah maybe a pojo is a better idea, I'll convert it!

[rkostrzewski]

In retrospective this could have been config.output.path - if this lands before #56 I'll change it there

[ForsakenHarmony]

Is this still relevant with the ssr-bundle being produced now?

[ForsakenHarmony]

given that there has been no activity I'm gonna close this

we're working towards modularising the cli which will also export the config

[Download]

Why was this closed?
I still cannot find a good answer to the question:
How to take a preact-cli app and make it server-side rendering?
I was hoping this PR was the answer...

[lukeed]

@Download You can require the build/ssr-build/ssr-bundle.js file directly and pass in whatever URLs you want to as props.url.

It's the same approach the CLI is using internally to produce the "prerendered" outputs -- except that you can do it at runtime.

I have a full example with this approach & am using it on a couple sites: https://github.com/lukeed/preact-cli-ssr

[Download]

Thanks @lukeed an example is always best! I will check out your repo.