How to load a local video in React using webpack?

Question

I can't seem to figure out how to get an html5 video to render in a react app from local files. Literally the only way I've been able to get this to work is like this:

<video src="http://www.w3schools.com/html/movie.mp4" controls />

Here's what I've tried

1. Including the path directly

<video src={require('path/to/file.mp4')} controls />

which returns an error

Module parse failed: /path/to/file.mp4 Line 1: Unexpected token ILLEGAL
You may need an appropriate loader to handle this file type.

---

2. Adding these loaders one at a time to the webpack config

{
  test: /\.(mp4)$/,
  loader: 'file'
  // loader: 'url-loader'
  // loader: 'url-loader?limit=100000'
  // loader: 'file-loader'
  // loader: 'file-loader?name=videos/[name].[ext]'
},

this spit out the following error in the browser

GET http://localhost:3000/530c2bf99dad0f857d46940b62b84946.mp4 404 (Not Found)

---

3. I tried adding a direct url to the file

<video src={require('http://localhost:3000/path/to/file.mp4')} controls />

but still errors:

Module not found: Error: Cannot resolve module 'http://localhost:3000/path/to/file.mp4' in path/to/file.mp4

---

4. I tried adding the mp4 extension in my webpack config like this person did

{
  test: /\.jpe?g$|\.gif$|\.png$|\.ico|\.svg$|\.woff$|\.ttf$|.mp4$/,
  loader: 'url-loader?limit=8192'
}

but no luck

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5. I started implementing webpack-isomorphic-tools but then I wasn't sure if this was the right direction so I paused on it. It seems like this guy got it working this way. (see file)

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I also noticed in the webpack documentation under loader conventions that file-loader will load video files. Does this mean webpack won't load other video types such as .mov, .vob, .avi, etc.?

If you want to take a look at the code, here's the repository.

---

Resources

• Webpack Docs: Loader Conventions
• Add a WebM and MP4 loader to the default Webpack config
• Loading mp4 video in to video tag w/ File loader
• Unable to load resources via file-loader

Hanuman

"Does this mean webpack won't load other video types such as .mov, .vob, .avi, etc.?" --- it does not mean that: webpack does not care how you match filenames as soon as test passes. – Komarek

I think your 'test' regex is wrong. Try /\.(png|jpg|jpeg|gif|svg|mp4)$/. – Ollie

@Dai what's wrong with it? – Komarek

@Komarek Sorry, it just looked redundant and the last . was not escaped, but I don't think it is the origin of the problem, i.e. not wrong. What do you get in the src when using solution 4? – Ollie

@Dai I'm not an OP :-) Indeed, the . must be escaped, but that could only lead to false-positives, that is not a problem at the moment. – Komarek

try importing your file on top of the component instead of importing inside jsx. for ex: import videoUrl from '/path/to/file.mp4' and then inside jsx put <video src={videoUrl} />. – Typecast

yeah the import statement didn't work. It still gave the same error as solution 2. – Hanuman

I was able to get it work doing both 1. and 2. together. The only difference is that I did a var x = require('path/to/video'). I also used the name=videos/[name].[ext], may be related. Also make sure you start and stop webpack if you're watching files. – Radionuclide

Answer 1

I had the same problem, my solution is:

It uses https://github.com/webpack/html-loader and https://github.com/webpack/url-loader:

The loaders configuration:

  loaders: [{
      test: /\.html$/,
      loader: 'html-loader?attrs[]=video:src'
    }, {
      test: /\.mp4$/,
      loader: 'url?limit=10000&mimetype=video/mp4'
  }]

And in html:

A simple video tag, remeber webpack uses path referenced to the html file.

<video src="../../../assets/videos/cover1.mp4"></video>

This works for me.

References: https://github.com/webpack/html-loader/issues/28

Nesto

I suppose there is typo. should be loader: 'url-loader?limit.... Works for me this way – Endways

Answer 2

Although this is an old post, and the question is specifically about WebPack...

If you're using Typescript and a boilerplate such as create-react-app, and if you have your video on the static folder, then please check out this solution, of adding the type to src/react-app-env.d.ts, before ejecting your app:

https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/issues/6822

Byway

Just to add to this: if you are using VS Code, you'd have to restart your Typescript server as well. This is done by opening the Command Pallete (Ctrl + Shift + P) while in a .ts file then search for "restart TS server". – Cherimoya