What exactly am I supposed to do with "module.exports = 'html_template_content'" on webpack - node.js

Question

So I want to do a very simple task using webpack.
I have a few static HTML templates like e.g.
test.html
<div><span>template content</span></div>
and all I want to do is return the string inside the template
e.g
require("raw!./test.html")
with should return a string like:
"<div><span>template content</span></div>"
but instead, it returns the following string
"modules.exports = <div><span>template content</span></div>"
I have tried several modules, like the raw-loader and html-loader.
and they both behave the same way.So I took a look at the source code, just to find out that its SUPPOSED to behave this way.
so what exactly am I expected to do with this, if I just want the raw
HTML? is it a bad practice just to remove the prepended
"module.exports =" string? from the bundle
edit: removing the 'modules.export =' part results in the bundle returning nothing :/
my config
module.exports =
{
module:
{
loaders:
[
{ test: /\.html$/, loader: "raw-loader" }
]
}
};

Answer 1

The solution is to require your file without specifying any additional loader, as this is already specified in the webpack config
const test = require('./test.html')
Explanation: With your current code, you are applying the raw loader twice to your file. When you specify a loader chain in your configuration:
loaders:
[
{ test: /\.html$/, loader: "raw-loader" }
]
... you are already telling webpack to add this loader to the loader chain every time you require a file matching the test condition (here, every html file)
Therefore, when you write this
const test = require('raw!./test.html')
... it is actually equivalent to this
const test = require('raw!raw!./test.html')

Answer 2

I finally figured it out I think. You need to resolve the path name using require.resolve(./test.html) https://nodejs.org/dist/latest-v7.x/docs/api/globals.html#globals_require

Answer 3

When you write require('./test.html') it means that you simply run the code returned by the loaders chain. The result is exported in this code as module.exports. To use this result you need to assign your require statement to variable:
var htmlString = require('raw!./test.html');
//htmlString === "<div><span>template content</span></div>"
Remember that any loader in Webpack returns JS code - not HTML, not CSS. You can use this code to get HTML, CSS and whatever.