esbuild-manifest-plugin

Plugin for esbuild to generate a manifest file for all digested files.

That manifest can be used by applications to resolve output filenames (which may include content hashes or be nested into directories) from their input filenames.

If you are using the esbuild-sass-plugin to have esbuild also compile Sass files, they will be included in the manifest.

This library is written in TypeScript and shipped as both ESM and CommonJS with bundled type definitions.

Installation

npm install -D esbuild-manifest-plugin

Or add to your project's package.json.

Usage

Add the plugin to the plugins section of the esbuild config.

ESM:

import path from 'path'
import esbuild from 'esbuild'
import manifestPlugin from 'esbuild-manifest-plugin'

await esbuild.build({
  entryPoints: ['application.js'],
  entryNames: '[dir]/[name]-[hash]',
  assetNames: '[dir]/[name]-[hash]',
  bundle: true,
  outdir: path.join(__dirname, 'public/assets'),
  absWorkingDir: path.join(__dirname, 'app/assets'),
  plugins: [manifestPlugin()],
})

CommonJS:

const path = require('path')
const esbuild = require('esbuild')
const manifestPlugin = require('esbuild-manifest-plugin')

esbuild.build({
  entryPoints: ['application.js'],
  entryNames: '[dir]/[name]-[hash]',
  assetNames: '[dir]/[name]-[hash]',
  bundle: true,
  outdir: path.join(__dirname, 'public/assets'),
  absWorkingDir: path.join(__dirname, 'app/assets'),
  plugins: [manifestPlugin()],
})

That generates a manifest.json in the configured outdir which looks like this:

{
  "application.js": "application-HP2LS2UH.js",
  "application.css": "application-BWAZLURC.css",
  "images/example.png": "images/example-5N2N2WJM.png",
  "bootstrap-icons/bootstrap-icons.svg": "_.._/_.._/node_modules/bootstrap-icons/bootstrap-icons-UNS4ZK23.svg"
}

Note that the plugin requires the metafile option to be enabled in esbuild for the plugin to work; it will automatically do that for you.

Options

The plugin accepts the following ManifestPluginOptions:

filename

Specifies the manifest filename.

Default: "manifest.json"

nodeModulesPrefix

Any non-entrypoint assets with input paths from inside a project's node_modules directory are rewritten for convenience. You may specify the path prefix to use, or false to disable that.

Examples for an input source ../node_modules/example-lib/image.png:

Value	Output
""	"example-lib/image.png"
"~"	"~example-lib/image.png"
false	"../node_modules/example-lib/image.png" (i.e. original value)

Default: ""

Development

After checking out the repo, install dependencies with pnpm:

pnpm install

Common scripts:

pnpm run lint       # Biome lint + format check
pnpm run format     # Biome auto-format
pnpm run typecheck  # tsc --noEmit
pnpm run build      # build.mjs — emits dist/index.{js,cjs,d.ts,d.cts}
pnpm test           # Vitest

Running tests

The test suite runs real esbuild.build calls against the fixtures under test/fixtures/ and asserts on the generated manifest.json.

Run the full suite:

pnpm test

GitHub Actions runs lint, typecheck, and build once, and test on a Node matrix (18, 20, 22, 24) on every push and pull request to main; see .github/workflows/test.yml.

Release process

To release a new version:

1. Update the version in package.json.
2. Move the "Unreleased changes" entries in CHANGELOG.md under a new version heading with today's date.
3. Commit the changes and tag the commit (git tag vX.Y.Z).
4. Push the commit and the tag (git push && git push --tags).
5. Ensure you are logged into npm (pnpm whoami || pnpm login)
6. Publish to npm with pnpm publish (only the dist/ directory is shipped).