Loading assets via a loader's `this.loadModule()` doesn't emit asset files

Bug report

What is the current behavior? When calling this.loadModule( "some-path", callback ) from a loader while some-path is defined as an asset in the module rules (eg. type: "asset/source"), webpack won’t emit some-path as an asset.

If the current behavior is a bug, please provide the steps to reproduce. See my simple reproduction repo here: https://github.com/bastimeyer/webpack-load-module-asset

Relevant files

• https://github.com/bastimeyer/webpack-load-module-asset/blob/b6c670f2011ba7d4cc0cf2def17df0359b3c98c6/webpack.config.js
• https://github.com/bastimeyer/webpack-load-module-asset/blob/b6c670f2011ba7d4cc0cf2def17df0359b3c98c6/src/index.js
• https://github.com/bastimeyer/webpack-load-module-asset/blob/b6c670f2011ba7d4cc0cf2def17df0359b3c98c6/src/loader.js

Build log (verbose stats): https://github.com/bastimeyer/webpack-load-module-asset/runs/2794477055?check_suite_focus=true#step:5:1

What is the expected behavior? Webpack should emit the asset loaded from within the loader just like when loading the asset from an import / require call / etc, or when using the file-loader for emitting resolved asset files.

Other relevant information: webpack version: 5.38.1 (currently the latest version) Node.js version: 16.3.0 (irrelevant) Operating System: Arch Linux (irrelevant) Additional tools: yarn (irrelevant)

[vankop]

we discussed this internally… In my opinion there is no need to create specific api for that. mostly you always need an url to this asset. So in case:

Just as a short description how I’ve been running into this problem: I’m using a custom loader for parsing JSON files which have entries for certain file paths which need to be resolved and emitted as asset files. Webpack5 doesn’t allow me to do this without the deprecated file-loader. Declaring those file paths as assets in the webpack5 config does not work, hence this bug report. The “specific syntax” mentioned above does not work and it shouldn’t be required either, as described in my previous post.

You can transform your json to js json

{ "asset": "./a.txt" }

transformed

import a from "./a.txt";

export default { "asset": a }

[decademoon]

@bastimeyer That’s literally my exact use case too.

See https://github.com/usmanyunusov/webpack-webmanifest-loader for a webpack 5 loader which does a similar thing. It loads a webmanifest file (json) and replaces paths to image assets with the final bundled path of that asset. It uses child compilers and stuff which goes over my head.