With the rapid development of content management systems (CMS), there is a growing need for modular and extensible solutions. JavaScript Module Federation in Webpack 5 provides a powerful tool for creating pluggable CMS modules. In this article, we will explore how to leverage this feature to build CMS modules that can be easily added or removed from a platform.

What is JavaScript Module Federation?

JavaScript Module Federation is a feature introduced in Webpack 5 that enables you to share JavaScript modules between applications at runtime. It allows you to dynamically load and use modules from different Webpack builds, even if they are hosted on different domains. This makes it a perfect fit for building pluggable CMS modules that can be seamlessly integrated into a CMS platform.

Building a pluggable CMS module

Let’s imagine that we want to create a pluggable CMS module for adding image galleries to our CMS platform. We can start by setting up a new module project using Webpack, and configuring it to expose the necessary functionality.

First, we define the entry point for our module:

// module.js
export const createImageGallery = () => {
  /* Module implementation goes here */
};

Next, we configure Webpack to expose the createImageGallery function as a remote module that can be consumed by other applications:

// webpack.config.js
const { ModuleFederationPlugin } = require("webpack").container;

module.exports = {
  // other configuration options...
  plugins: [
    new ModuleFederationPlugin({
      name: "imageGallery",
      library: { type: "var", name: "imageGallery" },
      filename: "remoteEntry.js",
      exposes: {
        "./createImageGallery": "./module.js",
      },
    }),
  ],
};

By setting the name option to “imageGallery” and exposing the createImageGallery function, we can now build the module and generate a remoteEntry.js file that other applications can consume.

Consuming the CMS module

To consume the pluggable CMS module in our CMS platform, we need to configure our main application to load the module dynamically at runtime. We can achieve this by using the import() function and Webpack’s container elements.

// main.js
import React, { useEffect, useState } from "react";

const App = () => {
  const [imageGallery, setImageGallery] = useState(null);

  useEffect(() => {
    async function loadModule() {
      const imageGalleryModule = await import("http://path/to/remoteEntry.js");
      const moduleInstance = await imageGalleryModule.createImageGallery();
      setImageGallery(moduleInstance);
    }

    loadModule();
  }, []);

  return <div>{imageGallery && <imageGallery.Component />}</div>;
};

export default App;

In this example, we use import() to load the remoteEntry.js file dynamically. We then call createImageGallery() to get an instance of the CMS module, which we can use to render the image gallery component.

Conclusion

JavaScript Module Federation in Webpack 5 enables the creation of pluggable CMS modules that can be easily added or removed from a CMS platform. By leveraging this powerful feature, developers can build modular and extensible CMS solutions that offer a seamless integration experience.