Check out this guest post on the Babel.js blog for a complete write up on the problem, motivation, and solution.
Currently, each babel plugin in the babel ecosystem requires that you configure it individually. This is fine for things like language features, but can be frustrating overhead for libraries that allow for compile-time code transformation as an optimization.
babel-plugin-macros defines a standard interface for libraries that want to use
compile-time code transformation without requiring the user to add a babel
plugin to their build system (other than babel-plugin-macros, which is ideally
already in place).
Expand for more details on the motivation
For instance, many css-in-js libraries have a css tagged template string function:
const styles = css`
.red {
color: red;
}
`The function compiles your css into (for example) an object with generated class names for each of the classes you defined in your css:
console.log(styles) // { red: "1f-d34j8rn43y587t" }This class name can be generated at runtime (in the browser), but this has some disadvantages:
- There is cpu usage/time overhead; the client needs to run the code to generate these classes every time the page loads
- There is code bundle size overhead; the client needs to receive a CSS parser in order to generate these class names, and shipping this makes the amount of js the client needs to parse larger.
To help solve those issues, many css-in-js libraries write their own babel plugin that generates the class names at compile-time instead of runtime:
// Before running through babel:
const styles = css`
.red {
color: red;
}
`
// After running through babel, with the library-specific plugin:
const styles = {red: '1f-d34j8rn43y587t'}If the css-in-js library supported babel-plugin-macros instead, then they
wouldn't need their own babel plugin to compile these out; they could instead
rely on babel-plugin-macros to do it for them. So if a user already had
babel-plugin-macros installed and configured with babel, then they wouldn't
need to change their babel configuration to get the compile-time benefits of the
library. This would be most useful if the boilerplate they were using came with
babel-plugin-macros out of the box, which is true for
create-react-app.
Although css-in-js is the most common example, there are lots of other things
you could use babel-plugin-macros for, like:
- Compiling GraphQL fragments into objects so that the client doesn't need a GraphQL parser
- Eval-ing out code at compile time that will be baked into the runtime code, for instance to get a list of directories in the filesystem (see preval)
This module is distributed via npm which is bundled with node and
should be installed as one of your project's devDependencies:
npm install --save-dev babel-plugin-macros
You may like to watch this YouTube video to get an idea of what macros is and how it can be used.
Are you trying to use babel-plugin-macros? Go to
other/docs/user.md.
Are you trying to make your own macros that works with babel-plugin-macros? Go
to other/docs/author.md. (you should probably read the
user docs too).
Note: This issue is not present when used in Create React App.
Most of the time you'll probably be using this with the babel cache enabled in webpack to rebuild faster. If your macro function is not pure which gets different output with same code (e.g., IO side effects) it will cause recompile mechanism fail. Unfortunately you'll also experience this problem while developing your macro as well. If there's not a change to the source code that's being transpiled, then babel will use the cache rather than running your macro again.
For now, to force recompile the code you can simply add a cache busting comment in the file:
import macro from 'non-pure.macro';
-// Do some changes of your code or
+// add a cache busting comment to force recompile.
macro('parameters');This problem is still being worked on and is not unique to
babel-plugin-macros. For more details and workarounds, please check related
issues below:
- babel-plugin-preval: How to force recompile? #19
- graphql.macro: Recompile problem (babel cache) #6
- twin.macro: Can't change taliwind config #37
You can write your own without publishing them to npm, but if you'd like to
see existing macros you can add to your project, then take a look at the
Awesome babel macros
repository.
Please add any you don't see listed!
Let's use
babel-plugin-console as
an example.
If we used babel-plugin-console, it would look like this:
- Add
babel-plugin-consoleto.babelrc - Use it in a code:
function add100(a) {
const oneHundred = 100
console.scope('Add 100 to another number')
return add(a, oneHundred)
}
function add(a, b) {
return a + b
}When that code is run, the scope function does some pretty nifty things:
Browser:
Node:
Instead, let's use the macro it's shipped with like this:
- Add
babel-plugin-macrosto.babelrc(only once for all macros) - Use it in a code:
import scope from 'babel-plugin-console/scope.macro'
function add100(a) {
const oneHundred = 100
scope('Add 100 to another number')
return add(a, oneHundred)
}
function add(a, b) {
return a + b
}The result is exactly the same, but this approach has a few advantages:
Advantages:
- requires only one entry in
.babelrcfor all macros used in project. Add that once and you can use all the macros you want - toolkits (like create-react-app) may already support
babel-plugin-macros, so no configuration is needed at all - it's explicit. With
console.scopepeople may be fooled that it's just a normalconsoleAPI when there's really a babel transpilation going on. When you importscope, it's obvious that it's macro and does something with the code at compile time. Some ESLint rules may also have issues with plugins that look for "global" variables - macros are safer and easier to write, because they receive exactly the AST node to process
- If you misconfigure
babel-plugin-consoleyou wont find out until you run the code. If you misconfigurebabel-plugin-macrosyou'll get a compile-time error.
Drawbacks:
- Cannot (should not) be used for implicit transpilations (like syntax plugins)
- Explicitness is more verbose. Which some people might consider a drawback...
This is another advantage of babel-plugin-macros over regular plugins. The
user of the macro is in control of the ordering! The order of execution is the
same order as imported. The order of execution is clear, explicit and in full
control of the user:
import preval from 'preval.macro'
import idx from 'idx.macro'
// preval macro is evaluated first, then idxThis differs from the current situation with babel plugins where it's prohibitively difficult to control the order plugins run in a particular file.
No! Any AST node type is supported.
It can be tagged template literal:
import eval from 'eval.macro'
const val = eval`7 * 6`A function:
import eval from 'eval.macro'
const val = eval('7 * 6')JSX Element:
import Eval from 'eval.macro'
const val = <Eval>7 * 6</Eval>Really, anything...
See the testing snapshot for more examples.
All examples above were explicit - a macro was imported and then evaluated with a specific AST node.
Completely different story are implicit babel plugins, like transform-react-constant-elements, which process whole AST tree.
Explicit is often a better pattern than implicit because it requires others to
understand how things are globally configured. This is in this spirit are
babel-plugin-macros designed. However, some things do need to be implicit,
and those kinds of babel plugins can't be turned into macros.
Thank you to @phpnode for donating the npm package
babel-plugin-macros.
Looking to contribute? Look for the Good First Issue label.
Please file an issue for bugs, missing documentation, or unexpected behavior.
Please file an issue to suggest new features. Vote on feature requests by adding a π. This helps maintainers prioritize what to work on.
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