babel-loader jsx SyntaxError: Unexpected token

I’m a beginner in React + Webpack.

I found a weird error in my hello world web app.

I’m using babel-loader in webpack to help me convert jsx into js, but it seems like babel can’t understand jsx syntax.

Here are my dependencies:

"devDependencies": {
  "babel-core": "^6.0.14",
  "babel-loader": "^6.0.0",
  "webpack": "^1.12.2",
  "webpack-dev-server": "^1.12.1"
},
"dependencies": {
  "react": "^0.14.1"
}

Here is my webpack.config.js

var path = require('path');
module.exports = {
  entry: ['webpack/hot/dev-server',path.resolve(__dirname, 'app/main.js')],
  output: {
    path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'build'),
    filename: 'bundle.js'
  },
  module: {
      loaders: [
          { test: /.js$/, exclude: /node_modules/, loader: "babel-loader"}
      ]
  }
};

Here is my app/main.js

var React = require("react");
React.render(<h1>hello world</h1>,document.getElementById("app"));

And this is the error message

ERROR in ./app/main.js
Module build failed: SyntaxError: ~/**/app/main.js: Unexpected token (2:13)
  1 | var React = require("react");
> 2 | React.render(<h1>hello world</h1>,document.getElementById("app"));
    |              ^
at Parser.pp.raise (~/**/node_modules/babylon/lib/parser/location.js:24:13)

Thanks for you guys.

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 1

Add “babel-preset-react”

npm install babel-preset-react

and add “presets” option to babel-loader in your webpack.config.js

(or you can add it to your .babelrc or package.js: http://babeljs.io/docs/usage/babelrc/)

Here is an example webpack.config.js:

{ 
    test: /.jsx?$/,         // Match both .js and .jsx files
    exclude: /node_modules/, 
    loader: "babel", 
    query:
      {
        presets:['react']
      }
}

Recently Babel 6 was released and there was a major change:
https://babeljs.io/blog/2015/10/29/6.0.0

If you are using react 0.14, you should use ReactDOM.render() (from require('react-dom')) instead of React.render(): https://facebook.github.io/react/blog/#changelog

UPDATE 2018

Rule.query has already been deprecated in favour of Rule.options. Usage in webpack 4 is as follows:

npm install babel-loader babel-preset-react

Then in your webpack configuration (as an entry in the module.rules array in the module.exports object)

{
    test: /.jsx?$/,
    exclude: /node_modules/,
    use: [
      {
        loader: 'babel-loader',
        options: {
          presets: ['react']
        }
      }
    ],
  }

Method 2

I ran into a similar issue when migrating from babel 5 to babel 6.

I was just running babel to compile the src to lib folder babel src --out-dir lib

I will share my setup for babel 6:

Ensure you have the following babel 6 devDependencies installed

"babel-core": "^6.7.6",
"babel-loader": "^6.2.4",
"babel-preset-es2015": "^6.6.0",
"babel-preset-react": "^6.5.0",
"babel-preset-stage-0": "^6.5.0"

Add your .babelrc file to the project:

{
  "presets": ["es2015", "stage-0", "react"]
}

Method 3

Since the answer above still leaves some people in the dark, here’s what a complete webpack.config.js might look like:

var path = require('path');
var config = {
    entry: path.resolve(__dirname, 'app/main.js'),
    output: {
        path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'build'),
        filename: 'bundle.js'
    },
    module: {
        loaders: [{
            test: /.jsx?$/,
            loader: 'babel',
            query:
            {
                presets:['es2015', 'react']
            }
        }]
    },

};

module.exports = config;

Method 4

For me the solution was to create the file .babelrc with this content:

{
  "presets": ["react", "es2015", "stage-1"]
}

Method 5

The following way has helped me (includes react-hot, babel loaders and es2015, react presets):

loaders: [
      {
        test: /.jsx?$/,
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        loaders: ['react-hot', 'babel?presets[]=es2015&presets[]=react']
      }
]

Method 6

For those who still might be facing issue adding jsx to test fixed it for me

test: /.jsx?$/,

Method 7

This works perfect for me

{
    test: /.(js|jsx)$/,
    loader: 'babel-loader',
    exclude: /node_modules/,
    query: {
        presets: ['es2015','react']
    }
},

Method 8

You can find a really good boilerplate made by Henrik Joreteg (ampersandjs) here: https://github.com/HenrikJoreteg/hjs-webpack

Then in your webpack.config.js

var getConfig = require('hjs-webpack')

module.exports = getConfig({
  in: 'src/index.js',
  out: 'public',
  clearBeforeBuild: true,
  https: process.argv.indexOf('--https') !== -1
})

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0