ng-packagr

Transpile your libraries to Angular Package Format

Usage Example

Let's talk us through a getting started that'll build an Angular library from TypeScript sources and create a distribution-ready npm package: create a package.json file, add the custom ngPackage property, and eventually run ng-packagr -p package.json – Here we go:

{
  "$schema": "./node_modules/ng-packagr/package.schema.json",
  "name": "@my/foo",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "ngPackage": {
    "lib": {
      "entryFile": "public_api.ts"
    }
  }
}

Note: Paths in the ngPackage section are resolved relative to the location of the package.json file. In the above example, public_api.ts is the entry file to the library's sources and must be placed next to package.json (a sibling in the same folder).

You can easily run ng-packagr through a npm/yarn script:

{
  "scripts": {
    "build": "ng-packagr -p package.json"
  }
}

Now, execute the build with the following command:

$ yarn build

The build output is written to the dist folder, containing all those binaries to meet the Angular Package Format specification. You'll now be able to go ahead and npm publish dist your Angular library to the npm registry.

Do you like to publish more libraries? Is your code living in a monorepo? Create one package.json per npm package, run ng-packagr for each!

Features

• 🎁 Implements Angular Package Format
  • 🏁 Bundles your library in FESM2015, FESM5, and UMD formats
  • 🎒 npm package can be consumed by Angular CLI, Webpack, or SystemJS
  • 💃 Creates type definitions (.d.ts)
  • 🏃 Generates Ahead-of-Time metadata (.metadata.json)
  • 🏆 Auto-discovers and bundles secondary entry points such as @my/foo, @my/foo/testing, @my/foo/bar
• 🔎 Creates scoped and non-scoped packages for publishing to npm registry
• 🏄 Inlines Templates and Stylesheets
• ✨ CSS Features
  • 🐫 Runs SCSS preprocessor, supporting the relative ~ import syntax
  • 🐘 Runs less preprocessor
  • 🐍 Runs Stylus preprocessor, resolves relative paths relative to ng-package.json
  • 🐒 Adds vendor-specific prefixes w/ autoprefixer and browserslist — just tell your desired .browserslistrc
  • 🐯 Embed assets data w/ postcss-url

Advanced Use Cases

Examples and Tutorials

Nikolas LeBlanc's story on medium.com: Building an Angular 4 Component Library with the Angular CLI and ng-packagr

Here is a demo repository showing ng-packagr and Angular CLI in action.

What about ng-packagr alongside Nx Workspace? Well, they work well together!

Configuration Locations

Configuration is picked up from the project file given by the -p CLI option. The -p option may refer to a package.json (with custom ngPackage property), an ng-package.json, or an ng-package.js file. When the -p option refers to a directory, the configuration is picked up from the first matching source; locations are tried in the above-mentioned order.

To configure with a package.json, put the configuration in the ngPackage custom property:

{
  "$schema": "./node_modules/ng-packagr/package.schema.json",
  "ngPackage": {
    "lib": {
      "entryFile": "public_api.ts"
    }
  }
}

To configure with a ng-package.json or ng-package.js, keep the library's package.json in the same folder next to ng-package.json or ng-package.js.

Example of ng-package.json:

{
  "$schema": "./node_modules/ng-packagr/ng-package.schema.json",
  "lib": {
    "entryFile": "public_api.ts"
  }
}

Example of ng-package.js:

module.exports = {
  lib: {
    entryFile: 'public_api.ts'
  }
};

Note: referencing the $schema enables JSON editing support (auto-completion for configuration) in IDEs like VSCode.

Secondary Entry Points

Beside the primary entry point, a package can contain one or more secondary entry points (e.g. @angular/core/testing, @angular/cdk/a11y, …). These contain symbols that we don't want to group together with the symbols in the main entry. The module id of a secondary entry directs the module loader to a sub-directory by the secondary's name. For instance, @angular/core/testing resolves to a directory under node_modules/@angular/core/testing containing a package.json file that directs the loader to the correct location for what it's looking for.

For library developers, secondary entry points are dynamically discovered by searching for package.json files within sub directories of the main package.json file's folder!

So how do I use secondary entry points (sub-packages)?

All you have to do is create a package.json file and put it where you want a secondary entry point to be created. One way this can be done is by mimicking the folder structure of the following example which has a testing entry point in addition to its main entry point.

my_package
├── src
|   └── *.ts
├── public_api.ts
├── ng-package.json
├── package.json
└── testing
    ├── src
    |   └── *.ts
    ├── public_api.ts
    └── package.json

The contents of the secondary package.json can be as simple as:

{
  "ngPackage": {}
}

No, that is not a typo. No name is required. No version is required. It's all handled for you by ng-packagr! When built, the primary entry is imported with @my/library and the secondary entry with @my/library/testing.

What if I don't like public_api.ts?

You can change the entry point file by using the ngPackage configuration field in your secondary package.json. For example, the following would use index.ts as the secondary entry point:

{
  "ngPackage": {
    "lib": {
      "entryFile": "index.ts"
    }
  }
}

How to embed assets in CSS?

You can embed assets such as font and images inside the outputted css. More information in the CSS tricks website

Valid values: none or inline.

{
  "ngPackage": {
    "lib": {
      "cssUrl": "inline"
    }
  }
}

Third-party dependencies: external and embedded dependencies

By default, dependencies of a library are treated as external dependencies and thus are not embedded in the final bundle. In most cases, you should expect that third-party dependencies will be part of the peerDependencies of your distributables.

However, if you want to embed a dependency into the distributable bundle you are able to do so by adding the dependency in the embedded section like so:

HEADS UP: embedding a dependency will result in you shipping the dependency's source code to your users!

{
  "$schema": "../../../src/ng-package.schema.json",
  "lib": {
    "embedded": [
      "lodash",
      "date-fns"
    ]
  }
}

By default, ng-packagr will treat dependencies as external dependencies. When writing the UMD bundle, ng-packagr does its best to provide common default values for the UMD module identifiers and rollup will also do its best to guess the module ID of an external dependency. Even then, you should make sure that the UMD module identifiers of the external dependencies are correct. In case ng-packagr doesn't provide a default and rollup is unable to guess the correct identifier, you should explicitly provide the module identifier by using umdModuleIds in the library's package file section like so:

{
  "$schema": "../../../src/ng-package.schema.json",
  "lib": {
    "umdModuleIds": {
      "lodash" : "_",
      "date-fns" : "DateFns",
    }
  }
}

React loves Angular, Angular loves React

What if I want to use React Components in Angular?

If you have React Components that you're using in your library, and want to use proper JSX/TSX syntax in order to construct them, you can set the jsx flag for your library through ng-package.json like so:

{
  "$schema": "../../../src/ng-package.schema.json",
  "lib": {
    "entryFile": "public_api.ts",
    "umdModuleIds": {
      "react": "React",
      "react-dom": "ReactDOM"
    },
    "jsx": "react"
  }
}

The jsx flag will accept what the corresponding tsconfig accepts, more information in the TypeScript Handbook chaper on JSX.

Note: Don't forget to include react and react-dom in umdModuleIds so that you're shipping a correct UMD bundle!

Further documentation

We keep track of user questions in GitHub's issue tracker and try to build a documentation from it. Explore issues w/ label documentation.

Knowledge

Angular Package Format v5.0, design document at Google Docs

Packaging Angular - Jason Aden at ng-conf 2017 (28min talk)