TypeError: CleanwebpackPlugin is not a constructor

i'm trying to preview a vue web application through webpack-server-dev.I'm following this guide https://medium.com/the-web-tub/creating-your-first-vue-js-pwa-project-22f7c552fb34

The guide explains that the plugin is used to delete old and unused files in the dist directory. I have already tried replacing const CleanWebpackPlugin = require('clean-webpack-plugin') with const { CleanWebpackPlugin } = require('clean-webpack-plugin') which some posts suggest. i have also tried looking at the documentation on https://github.com/johnagan/clean-webpack-plugin but without succes as i am pretty new to this.

when i try to npm run dev i get this error

    new CleanWebpackPlugin(['dist']),
    ^

TypeError: CleanWebpackPlugin is not a constructor
    at module.exports (C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\webpack.config.js:56:5)
    at handleFunction (C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\node_modules\webpack-cli\bin\utils\prepareOptions.js:21:13)
    at prepareOptions (C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\node_modules\webpack-cli\bin\utils\prepareOptions.js:9:5)
    at requireConfig (C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\node_modules\webpack-cli\bin\utils\convert-argv.js:119:14)
    at C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\node_modules\webpack-cli\bin\utils\convert-argv.js:125:17
    at Array.forEach (<anonymous>)
    at module.exports (C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\node_modules\webpack-cli\bin\utils\convert-argv.js:123:15)
    at Object.<anonymous> (C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\node_modules\webpack-dev-server\bin\webpack-dev-server.js:79:40)
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:776:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:787:10)
    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:653:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:593:12)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:585:3)
    at Function.Module.runMain (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:829:12)
    at startup (internal/bootstrap/node.js:283:19)
    at bootstrapNodeJSCore (internal/bootstrap/node.js:622:3)

and this is the webpack.config.js file

const path = require('path')

const { VueLoaderPlugin } = require('vue-loader')
const HtmlWebpackPlugin = require('html-webpack-plugin')
const CopyWebpackPlugin = require('copy-webpack-plugin')
const CleanWebpackPlugin = require('clean-webpack-plugin')

module.exports = (env, argv) => ({
  mode: argv && argv.mode || 'development',
  devtool: (argv && argv.mode || 'development') === 'production' ? 'source-map' : 'eval',

  entry: './src/app.js',

  output: {
    path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist'),
    filename: '[name].js'
  },

  node: false,

  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.vue$/,
        loader: 'vue-loader'
      },
      {
        test: /\.js$/,
        loader: 'babel-loader'
      },
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        use: [
          'vue-style-loader',
          'css-loader'
        ],
        exclude: /\.module\.css$/
      }
    ]
  },

  resolve: {
    extensions: [
      '.js',
      '.vue',
      '.json'
    ],
    alias: {
      'vue$': 'vue/dist/vue.esm.js',
      '@': path.resolve(__dirname, 'src')
    }
  },

  plugins: [
    new CleanWebpackPlugin(['dist']),
    new VueLoaderPlugin(),
    new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
      template: path.resolve(__dirname, 'static', 'index.html'),
      inject: true
    }),
    new CopyWebpackPlugin([{
      from: path.resolve(__dirname, 'static'),
      to: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist'),
      toType: 'dir'
    }])
  ],

  optimization: {
    splitChunks: {
      chunks: 'all',
      minSize: 30000,
      maxSize: 0,
      cacheGroups: {
        vendors: {
          test: /[\\/]node_modules[\\/]/,
          priority: -10
        },
        default: {
          minChunks: 2,
          priority: -20,
          reuseExistingChunk: true
        }
      }
    },
    runtimeChunk: {
      name: entrypoint => `runtime~${entrypoint.name}`
    },
    mangleWasmImports: true,
    removeAvailableModules: true,
    removeEmptyChunks: true,
    mergeDuplicateChunks: true
  },

  devServer: {
    compress: true,
    host: 'localhost',
    https: true,
    open: true,
    overlay: true,
    port: 9000
  }
});

this is the error i get when using the right import as explained in the documenation :

      throw new Error(`clean-webpack-plugin only accepts an options object. See:
      ^

Error: clean-webpack-plugin only accepts an options object. See:
            https://github.com/johnagan/clean-webpack-plugin#options-and-defaults-optional
    at new CleanWebpackPlugin (C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\node_modules\clean-webpack-plugin\dist\clean-webpack-plugin.js:27:13)
    at module.exports (C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\webpack.config.js:56:5)
    at handleFunction (C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\node_modules\webpack-cli\bin\utils\prepareOptions.js:21:13)
    at prepareOptions (C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\node_modules\webpack-cli\bin\utils\prepareOptions.js:9:5)
    at requireConfig (C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\node_modules\webpack-cli\bin\utils\convert-argv.js:119:14)
    at C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\node_modules\webpack-cli\bin\utils\convert-argv.js:125:17
    at Array.forEach (<anonymous>)
    at module.exports (C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\node_modules\webpack-cli\bin\utils\convert-argv.js:123:15)
    at Object.<anonymous> (C:\Users\Eson\Desktop\pwa-vue-app-1\node_modules\webpack-dev-server\bin\webpack-dev-server.js:79:40)
    at Module._compile (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:776:30)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:787:10)
    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:653:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:593:12)
    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:585:3)
    at Function.Module.runMain (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:829:12)
    at startup (internal/bootstrap/node.js:283:19) 

if i delete line 56 in webpack.config.js i can run the web application without problems, but i want to understand the source of this issue

The correct one is to use this import:

const { CleanWebpackPlugin } = require('clean-webpack-plugin');

And then instead of passing an array with the distribution folder, change it to

plugins: [
     new CleanWebpackPlugin(),
     //...
]

I had the same problem, and I solved it in the following way：

    const { CleanWebpackPlugin } = require('clean-webpack-plugin');

    plugins: [
        new CleanWebpackPlugin({
            cleanAfterEveryBuildPatterns: ['dist']
        })
    ]

I had the same issue today, right now. As you can tell, there was a mismatch between the docs and the actual code. And in fact, you can see in the last commit they merged both to the documentation:

and also to the code:

So I just switched from const CleanWebpackPlugin = require('clean-webpack-plugin') to

const { CleanWebpackPlugin } = require('clean-webpack-plugin');

and it works fine.

I think you may have been caught in between things. Reinstall the npm package and try again, it should work.

I wrote a bit of what you can see in their public repository because very often when sudden changes like this happen, you'll find your own answer in the repo, probably in the last commits. And it's good reading a bit of the code you use, especially if it helps you troubleshoot your issue :)

With the update you'll need to do the following to include it

const { CleanWebpackPlugin } = require('clean-webpack-plugin');

Then in the array of plugins replace add the following

plugins: [
     new CleanWebpackPlugin(['dist]),
]

with

plugins: [
     new CleanWebpackPlugin(),
]

As the with the update there is no need to pass any parameters as it will remove all files inside webpack's output.path directory, as well as all unused webpack assets after every successful rebuild.

For those finding this error with the recent updates to nativescript-vue, I fixed it by changing webpack.config.js (top level file in app folder). As above, it now reflects the syntax in the CleanWebpackPlugin docs.

//const CleanWebpackPlugin = require("clean-webpack-plugin");
  const { CleanWebpackPlugin } = require('clean-webpack-plugin');

and

//new CleanWebpackPlugin(itemsToClean, { verbose: !!verbose }),
  new CleanWebpackPlugin(),

When import, use { CleanWebpackPlugin } instead of CleanWebpackPlugin

This happens when the version is more than 1.

Example:

const { CleanWebpackPlugin } = require("clean-webpack-plugin");

CleanWebpackPlugin v3.0.0

Replaced default export with named export CleanWebpackPlugin

[https://github.com/johnagan/clean-webpack-plugin/releases/tag/v3.0.0]

correct code is:

// es modules
import { CleanWebpackPlugin } from 'clean-webpack-plugin';

// common js
const { CleanWebpackPlugin } = require('clean-webpack-plugin');

I am not very much familiar with webpack and currently learning it

although this thing below helped me fix the issue

I just uninstall clean-webpack-plugin and then reinstall as dependency before this i've intalled as a dev-dependency

after uninstall and installing it like that : npm install --save clean-webpack-plugin

and by adding this

const { CleanWebpackPlugin } = require("clean-webpack-plugin");

solved my issue!!

hope it helps

I had the same issue today, I figured out that I also had to remove webpack.config.js file.

After deleting the file, i had to rerun npm install

-> Application started successfully.

--

Inside webpack.config.js some old references were placed.

This is probably a weird outlier reason for this - but I just came across this while setting up an old project on a new linux machine. It turned out I didn't have dev dependencies installed for my project (by default if npm config is set to production it won't install dev dependencies when running npm install - although I'm not sure exactly why mine was set to production), my webpack cli is 4 but my project is at 2.6.1 so it was using the webpack 4 but my webpack.config was for 2. So make sure your dev dependencies are installed.

Be also aware of writing it like this

const {
    CleanWebpackPlugin
} = require('clean-webpack-plugin');

and not like this :

const {
    cleanWebpackPlugin
} = require('clean-webpack-plugin');

In my case that small letter C was an issue. It is class name of this plugin which is being imported, so there is no place for arbitrariness in naming.

Looks like docs are broken, correct code is > const CleanWebpackPlugin = require('clean-webpack-plugin')