Webpack and Express - Critical Dependencies Warning

Question

I have the following webpack.config.ts:

var webpack = require( \'webpack\' );
var path = require( \'path\' );

module.exports = {

  entry: [
           


        

Answer 1

Instead of excluding all of the npm dependencies to be bundled with nodeExternals you can also exclude only express by natively requiring it by replacing

import express from 'express';
// Or
const express = require('express');

To

const express = __non_webpack_require__('express');

That will suppress the warning caused by express

Answer 2

For those that only need to remove the express due to the view lib as mentioned here you can also explicitly target express in externals from your webpack config.

externals: [{ 'express': { commonjs: 'express' } }]

Answer 3

Use webpack-node-externals.

const nodeExternals = require('webpack-node-externals');

{
  target: 'node',
  externals: [nodeExternals()],
}

https://www.npmjs.com/package/webpack-node-externals