babel-plugin-remove-react-element

This Babel plugin can be used to remove every usage of a react component from code. Used with webpack, this can be used to create a bundle for a mobile website and a desktop website.

Installation

npm install --save-dev babel-plugin-remove-react-element

Usage

Via .babelrc (Recommended)

.babelrc

{
	"plugins": [
		["remove-react-element", { "elementNames": ["Desktop"] }]
	]
}

Via Node API

require("@babel/core").transform("code", {
	"plugins": [
		["remove-react-element", { "elementNames": ["Desktop"] }]
	]
});

Example

In

	class MyPage extends Component {
	    render() {
	        return <div>
	            <Desktop>
	                This will show on desktops.
	            </Desktop>
	            <Mobile>
	                This will show on mobile.
	            </Mobile>
	        </div>
	    }
	}

Out

	class MyPage extends Component {
	    render() {
	        return <div>
	            {null}
	            <Mobile>
	                This will show on mobile.
	            </Mobile>
	        </div>
	    }
	}

Why...

Consider the following react component... The code below can be compiled and bundled without remove-react-element. The resulting bundle would be a valid responsive website.

import MediaQuery from 'react-responsive';
import React, { Component } from 'react';

//The markup wrapped inside the <Desktop/> tag will only show
// if the width of the page is lower than 1224px.
class Desktop extends Component {
    render() {
        return <MediaQuery query="(min-device-width: 1224px)">
            { this.props.children }
        </MediaQuery>;
    }
}

//The markup wrapped inside the <Mobile/> tag will only show
// if the width of the page is lower than 1224px.
class Mobile extends Component {
    render() {
        return <MediaQuery query="(max-device-width: 1224px)">
            { this.props.children }
        </MediaQuery>;
    }
}

export class MyPage extends Component {
    render() {
        return <div>
            <Desktop>
                This will show on desktops.
            </Desktop>
            <Mobile>
                This will show on mobile.
            </Mobile>
        </div>
    }
}

But you might have a requirement to generate a smaller bundle for mobile devices. This bundle would not need to contain the markup related to desktop. This can be achieved with remove-react-element.

To achieve this, you can configure webpack as followed.

const webpack = require('webpack');
const path = require('path');
const UglifyJSPlugin = require('uglifyjs-webpack-plugin');

module.exports = {
	...
	module: {
		rules: [
			{
				include: [
					path.resolve('./src')
				],
				use: [
					{
						loader: 'babel-loader',
						options: {
							plugins: [
								[
									"remove-react-element",
									{ "elementNames": ["Desktop"] }
							    ]
							]
						}
					}
				]
			}
		]
	},
	plugins: [
		new UglifyJSPlugin({
			uglifyOptions: {
				beautify: true,
				ecma: 6,
				compress: true,
				comments: false
			}
		})
	]
};

Once the plugin remove-react-element has removed all the usages of the Desktop components, uglifyjs will remove all the dead code... so all the unused components should be removed from the bundle.