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Question 11 of 89

Explain the difference between style-loader and css-loader

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css-loader turns a CSS file into a JavaScript module, and style-loader puts that CSS on the page. In the classic setup, the two work together so that import './styles.css' styles the page.

  • css-loader interprets @import and url() the way webpack treats import and require(). It resolves those CSS dependencies and returns the CSS as a string.
  • style-loader injects that CSS into the DOM by adding <style> tags when the bundle runs.

Loaders run right to left, so style-loader sits first in the array and runs after css-loader.

// This processes CSS files and injects them into the DOM
{
  test: /\.css$/,
  use: ['style-loader', 'css-loader']
}

For production, MiniCssExtractPlugin.loader has long replaced style-loader, so the CSS goes into separate .css files the browser can cache. Since webpack 5.109, built-in CSS support is on by default for .css files that no loader rule matches. It can extract or inject styles itself, and mini-css-extract-plugin is now deprecated.

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