How to publish React component without including react

Question

I am creating a React component and want to publish it.

I've put in the package.json:

  "peerDependencies": {
    "react": "^15.6.1",
    "react-dom": "^15.6.1"
  },

And expect that when building my module with webpack, my component would not yell this:

 Module not found: Error: Can't resolve 'react'

How can I compile a production component without including React?

I checked some famous ones :

react-select react-toggle

And they list react only in peerDependecies (and in devDependecies, for testing and development purposes I guess) If I add react to my devDeps and run webpack -p it compiles successfully but then I have react in my component bundle.

Here my simple webpack config

What am I missing?

UPDATE I added "external" option in webpack config (the gist is updated), with this is compiles correctly, it does not include React in the bundle, but when I import it in project with React to use it it gives me:

Cannot read property 'Component' of undefined

soon as it finds React.Component of my component...

Answer 1

You can set it as a peerDependency but also add it as a devDependency so you can install it locally. make sure it's as external in webpack config. That's about all you need

see https://webpack.js.org/configuration/externals/#object

  externals: {
    react: {
      root: 'React',
      commonjs2: 'react',
      commonjs: 'react',
      amd: 'react'
    },
    'react-dom': {
      root: 'ReactDOM',
      commonjs2: 'react-dom',
      commonjs: 'react-dom',
      amd: 'react-dom'
    },
    'prop-types': {
      root: 'PropTypes',
      commonjs2: 'prop-types',
      commonjs: 'prop-types',
      amd: 'prop-types'
    }
  },

  output: {
    publicPath: '/',
    filename: '[name]',
    library: "foobar",
    libraryTarget: 'umd',
  }

when consuming:

"dependencies": { 
  "foobar": "1.0.0",
  "react": "~16.0.0",
  "react-dom": "~16.0.0",
  "prop-types": "^15.6.0"
}