Pug template as entry point

The Pug Plugin generates static HTML or template function from Pug template containing source files of scripts, styles, images, fonts and other resources, similar to how it works in Vite. This plugin allows using a template file as an entry point.

The plugin resolves source files of assets in templates and replaces them with correct output URLs in the generated HTML. The resolved assets will be processed via Webpack plugins/loaders and placed into the output directory. You can use a relative path or Webpack alias to a source file.

A template imported in JS will be compiled into template function. You can use the template function in JS to render the template with variables in runtime on the client-side in the browser.

💡 Highlights

• An entry point is the Pug template.
• Auto processing multiple templates in the entry path.
• Allows to specify script and style source files directly in Pug:
  • link(href="./style.scss" rel="stylesheet")
  • script(src="./app.tsx" defer="defer")
• Resolves source files in default attributes href src srcset etc. using relative path or alias:
  • link(href="../images/favicon.svg" type="image/svg" rel=icon)
  • img(src="@images/pic.png" srcset="@images/pic400.png 1x, @images/pic800.png 2x")
• Inlines JS and CSS into HTML.
• Inlines images into HTML and CSS.
• Compile the Pug template into template function for usage in JS on the client-side.
• Generates the preload tags for fonts, images, video, scripts, styles, etc.
• Generates the integrity attribute in the link and script tags.
• Generates the favicons of different sizes for various platforms.
• Built-in filters: :escape :code :highlight :markdown.
• You can create own plugin using the Plugin Hooks.

See the full list of features.

‼️ Note

The pug-plugin since version 5.0.0 is essentially the html-bundler-webpack-plugin under the hood, pre-configured to use Pug templates. All features and options of html-bundler-webpack-plugin are now available in pug-plugin.

⚠️ Warning

Compared to the version 4.x, in the new version 5.x the source asset file can be specified in a template without the require() function. For compatibility, the require() function is still supported.

OLD syntax

link(href=require("./style.scss") rel="stylesheet")

The asset path is relative to the partial template or can be as the webpack alias.

NEW syntax

link(href="./style.scss" rel="stylesheet")

The asset path is relative to the entry template or can be as the webpack alias.

See the full list of the BREAKING CHANGES in v5.

📋 Table of Contents

⚙️ Pug Plugin options

📜 History of Pug Plugin

Install and Quick start

Install the pug-plugin:

npm install pug-plugin --save-dev

Install additional packages for styles:

npm install css-loader sass sass-loader --save-dev

For example, there is the Pug template with source asset files ./src/views/index.pug:

html
  head
    //- relative path to SCSS source file
    link(href="../scss/style.scss" rel="stylesheet")
    //- relative path to TypeScript source file
    script(src="../app/main.js" defer="defer")
  body
    h1 Hello World!
    //- relative path to image source file
    img(src="../assets/images/picture1.png")
    //- Webpack alias as path (src/assets/images/) to image source file
    img(src="@images/picture2.png")

The minimal webpack config:

const PugPlugin = require('pug-plugin');

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    new PugPlugin({
      entry: {
        // define many page templates here
        index: 'src/views/index.pug', // => dist/index.html
      },
      js: {
        // JS output filename
        filename: 'js/[name].[contenthash:8].js',
      },
      css: {
        // CSS output filename
        filename: 'css/[name].[contenthash:8].css',
      },
    }),
  ],
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.(s?css|sass)$/,
        use: ['css-loader', 'sass-loader'],
      },
      {
        test: /\.(ico|png|jp?g|webp|svg)$/,
        type: 'asset/resource',
        generator: {
          filename: 'img/[name].[hash:8][ext][query]',
        },
      },
    ],
  },
};

Warning

No additional pug or html loaders required.

The generated HTML contains URLs of the output filenames:

<html>
  <head>
    <link href="css/style.05e4dd86.css" rel="stylesheet" />
    <script src="js/main.f4b855d8.js" defer="defer"></script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Hello World!</h1>
    <img src="img/picture1.58b43bd8.png" />
    <img src="img/picture2.bd858b43.png" />
  </body>
</html>

Pug Plugin options

The Pug plugin has all the options of the HTML Bundler Plugin, plus a few options specific to Pug plugin.

pretty

Type: 'auto'|boolean|Object Default: false

The Pug compiler generate minimized HTML. For formatting generated HTML is used the js-beautify with the following default options:

{
  html: {
    indent_size: 2,
    end_with_newline: true,
    indent_inner_html: true,
    preserve_newlines: true,
    max_preserve_newlines: 0,
    wrap_line_length: 120,
    extra_liners: [],
    space_before_conditional: true,
    js: {
      end_with_newline: false,
      preserve_newlines: true,
      max_preserve_newlines: 2,
      space_after_anon_function: true,
    },
    css: {
      end_with_newline: false,
      preserve_newlines: false,
      newline_between_rules: false,
    },
  },
}

Possible values:

• false - disable formatting
• true - enable formatting with default options
• 'auto' - in development mode enable formatting with default options, in production mode disable formatting, use prettyOptions to customize options
• {} - enable formatting with custom options, this object are merged with default options
  see options reference

prettyOptions

Type: Object Default: null

When the pretty option is set to auto or true, you can configure minification options using the prettyOptions.

History of Pug Plugin

Why the Pug Plugin since v5.0 based on html-bundler-webpack-plugin?

2021
The history of the creation of the pug-plugin began back in October 2021. In late 2021 I implemented the @webdiscus/pug-loader as а replacement for pug-loader because pug-loader was outdated and had many issues.

2022
Until 2022 html-webpack-plugin had no alternative. Using html-webpack-plugin caused me pain and suffering to configure webpack for rendering Pug templates containing various assets. In early 2022, I started developing the pug-plugin as a complete replacement for html-webpack-plugin and many other "crutches". During the year, the pug-plugin has gained a lot of useful features and was able to replace the html-webpack-plugin, mini-css-extract-plugin and many other plugins and loaders.

2023
Based on the pug-plugin code I decided to develop a universal html-bundler-webpack-plugin that would support all the most popular template engines, such as Eta, EJS, Handlebars, Nunjucks, Pug, TwigJS, and would be extendable for other template engines, e.g., LiquidJS. During the year, this plugin has gained even more useful features and absorbed all the functionality of the pug-plugin and the @webdiscus/pug-loader.

2024
In early 2024, the pug-plugin completely switched to the universal code of html-bundler-webpack-plugin. Starting from version 5.0, the pug-plugin is the html-bundler-webpack-plugin unter the hood, pre-configured for Pug templates with the pre-installed pug package.

The config of pug-plugin >= v5.0:

const PugPlugin = require('pug-plugin');

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    new PugPlugin({
      entry: {
        index: 'src/views/home.pug',
      },
    }),
  ],
};

The above configuration is equivalent to:

const HtmlBundlerPlugin = require('html-bundler-webpack-plugin');

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    new HtmlBundlerPlugin({
      entry: {
        index: 'src/views/home.pug',
      },
      preprocessor: 'pug', // <= enable using Pug templating engine
    }),
  ],
};

The heart of pug-plugin now beats in the html-bundler-webpack-plugin.

@webdiscus/pug-loader -> pug-plugin -> html-bundler-webpack-plugin -> pug-plugin

Also See

• ansis - The Node.js library for ANSI color styling of text in terminal
• pug-loader - The Pug loader for webpack
• html-bundler-webpack-plugin - Generates HTML with JS and CSS from various templates containing source files of scripts, styles and other assets. Advanced alternative to html-webpack-plugin and modern replacement of many plugins and loaders.

License

ISC