Generate a Service Worker with Webpack

This page explains how to use the workbox-webpack-plugin node module to generate a complete service worker with precaching and runtime caching.

Install workbox-webpack-plugin

Start by installing workbox-webpack-plugin from npm.

npm install workbox-webpack-plugin --save-dev

Set up your Webpack Config

To generate a service worker as part of your build process, you'll need to add the plugin to your webpack.config.js file like so:

// Inside of webpack.config.js:
const WorkboxPlugin = require('workbox-webpack-plugin');

module.exports = {
  // Other webpack config...

  plugins: [
    // Other plugins...

    new WorkboxPlugin.GenerateSW()
  ]
};

The generated service worker will be set up to precache all the files in your webpack build.

In your web page, you can register this service worker by adding:

<script>
// Check that service workers are supported
if ('serviceWorker' in navigator) {
  // Use the window load event to keep the page load performant
  window.addEventListener('load', () => {
    navigator.serviceWorker.register('/service-worker.js');
  });
}
</script>

Adding Runtime Caching

There may be files that you don't want to precache but will be used by your web app that you'd like to cache at runtime. Images are a great example.

Instead of precaching all images for your site, which will take up a lot of space in the cache, you can cache them as they are used and limit the number of images cached.

Runtime caching can be achieved by adding the runtimeCaching configuration to the options passed into GenerateSW(). runtimeCaching expects an array of objects that describe the runtime caching rules you want.

In the example below, we'll demonstrate how to cache images and limit that cache to a maximum of 10 images.

// Inside of webpack.config.js:
const WorkboxPlugin = require('workbox-webpack-plugin');

module.exports = {
  // Other webpack config...

  plugins: [
    // Other plugins...

    new WorkboxPlugin.GenerateSW({
      // Do not precache images
      exclude: [/\.(?:png|jpg|jpeg|svg)$/],

      // Define runtime caching rules.
      runtimeCaching: [{
        // Match any request that ends with .png, .jpg, .jpeg or .svg.
        urlPattern: /\.(?:png|jpg|jpeg|svg)$/,

        // Apply a cache-first strategy.
        handler: 'CacheFirst',

        options: {
          // Use a custom cache name.
          cacheName: 'images',

          // Only cache 10 images.
          expiration: {
            maxEntries: 10,
          },
        },
      }],
    })
  ]
};

The full set of available options can be found on the Workbox Webpack module page.