Integration of ViteJS in a Django project.
pip install django-vite
Add django_vite to your INSTALLED_APPS in your settings.py
(before your apps that are using it).
INSTALLED_APPS = [
...
'django_vite',
...
]Follow instructions on https://vitejs.dev/guide/. And mostly the SSR part.
Then in your ViteJS config file :
- Set the
baseoptions the same as yourSTATIC_URLDjango setting. - Set the
build.outDirpath to where you want the assets to compiled. - Set the
build.manifestoptions totrue. - As you are in SSR and not in SPA, you don't have an
index.htmlthat ViteJS can use to determine which files to compile. You need to tell it directly. In your ViteJS config file add the following :
export default defineConfig({
build {
...
rollupOptions: {
input: {
<unique key>: '<path to your asset>'
}
}
}
}As recommended on Vite's backend integration guide, your assets should include the modulepreload polyfill.
// Add this at the beginning of your app entry.
import 'vite/modulepreload-polyfill';-
Define a setting variable in your
settings.pynamedDJANGO_VITE_ASSETS_PATHcontaining the absolute path to where your assets are built.- This must correspond to your
build.outDirin your ViteJS configuration. - The
DJANGO_VITE_ASSETS_PATHmust be included in yourSTATICFILES_DIRSDjango setting.
- This must correspond to your
-
Define a setting variable in your
settings.pynamedDJANGO_VITE_DEV_MODEcontaining a boolean defining if you want to include assets in development mode or production mode.- In development mode, assets are included as modules using the ViteJS webserver. This will enable HMR for your assets.
- In production mode, assets are included as standard assets (no ViteJS webserver and HMR) like default Django static files. This means that your assets must be compiled with ViteJS before.
- This setting may be set as the same value as your
DEBUGsetting in Django. But you can do what is good for your needs.
Note : DJANGO_VITE_ASSETS_PATH supports pathlib.Path syntax or pure str.
Include this in your base HTML template file.
{% load django_vite %}
Then in your <head> element add this :
{% vite_hmr_client %}
- This will add a
<script>tag to include the ViteJS HMR client. - This tag will include this script only if
DJANGO_VITE_DEV_MODEis true, otherwise this will do nothing.
Then add this tag to load your scripts :
{% vite_asset '<path to your asset>' %}
This will add a <script> tag including your JS/TS script :
- In development mode, all scripts are included as modules.
- In development mode, all scripts are marked as
asyncanddefer. - You can pass a second argument to this tag to overrides attributes passed to the script tag.
- This tag only accept JS/TS, for other type of assets, they must be
included in the script itself using
importstatements. - In production mode, the library will read the
manifest.jsonfile generated by ViteJS and import all CSS files dependent of this script (before importing the script). - You can add as many of this tag as you want, for each input you specify in your ViteJS configuration file.
- The path must be relative to your
rootkey inside your ViteJS config file. - The path must be a key inside your manifest file
manifest.jsonfile generated by ViteJS. - In general, this path does not require a
/at the beginning (follow yourmanifest.jsonfile).
{% vite_asset_url '<path to your asset>' %}
This will generate only the URL to an asset with no tag surrounding it. Warning, this does not generate URLs for dependant assets of this one like the previous tag.
By default, all scripts tags are generated with a type="module" and crossorigin="" attributes just like ViteJS do by default if you are building a single-page app.
You can override this behavior by adding or overriding this attributes like so :
{% vite_asset '<path to your asset>' foo="bar" hello="world" %}
This line will add foo="bar" and hello="world" attributes.
You can also use context variables to fill attributes values :
{% vite_asset '<path to your asset>' foo=request.GET.bar %}
If you want to overrides default attributes just add them like new attributes :
{% vite_asset '<path to your asset>' crossorigin="anonymous" %}
Although it's recommended to keep the default type="module" attribute as ViteJS build scripts as ES6 modules.
If you want to consider legacy browsers that don't support ES6 modules loading
you may use @vitejs/plugin-legacy.
Django Vite supports this plugin. You must add stuff in complement of other script imports in the <head> tag.
Just before your <body> closing tag add this :
{% vite_legacy_polyfills %}
This tag will do nothing in development, but in production it will loads the polyfills generated by ViteJS.
And so next to this tag you need to add another import to all the scripts you have in the head but the 'legacy' version generated by ViteJS like so :
{% vite_legacy_asset '<path to your asset>' %}
Like the previous tag, this will do nothing in development but in production,
Django Vite will add a script tag with a nomodule attribute for legacy browsers.
The path to your asset must contain de pattern -legacy in the file name (ex : main-legacy.js).
This tag accepts overriding and adding custom attributes like the default vite_asset tag.
You can redefine those variables in your settings.py :
-
DJANGO_VITE_DEV_SERVER_PROTOCOL: ViteJS webserver protocol (default :http). -
DJANGO_VITE_DEV_SERVER_HOST: ViteJS webserver hostname (default :localhost). -
DJANGO_VITE_DEV_SERVER_PORT: ViteJS webserver port (default :3000) -
DJANGO_VITE_WS_CLIENT_URL: ViteJS webserver path to the HMR client used in thevite_hmr_clienttag (default :@vite/client). -
DJANGO_VITE_MANIFEST_PATH: Absolute path (including filename) to your ViteJS manifest file. This file is generated in yourDJANGO_VITE_ASSETS_PATH. But if you are in production (DEBUGis false) then it is in yourSTATIC_ROOTafter you collected your static files (supportspathlib.Pathorstr). -
DJANGO_VITE_LEGACY_POLYFILLS_MOTIF: The motif used to find the assets for polyfills inside themanifest.json(only if you use @vitejs/plugin-legacy). -
DJANGO_VITE_STATIC_URL_PREFIX: prefix directory of your static files built by Vite. (default :"")- Use it if you want to avoid conflicts with other static files in your project.
- It may be used with
STATICFILES_DIRS. - You also need to add this prefix inside vite config's
base. e.g.:
# settings.py DJANGO_VITE_STATIC_URL_PREFIX = 'bundler' STATICFILES_DIRS = (('bundler', '/srv/app/bundler/dist'),)
// vite.config.js export default defineConfig({ base: '/static/bundler/', ... })
-
In production mode, all generated path are prefixed with the
STATIC_URLsetting of Django. -
If you are serving your static files with whitenoise, by default your files compiled by vite will not be considered immutable and a bad cache-control will be set. To fix this you will need to set a custom test like so:
import re
# Vite generates files with 8 hash digits
# http://whitenoise.evans.io/en/stable/django.html#WHITENOISE_IMMUTABLE_FILE_TEST
def immutable_file_test(path, url):
# Match filename with 12 hex digits before the extension
# e.g. app.db8f2edc0c8a.js
return re.match(r"^.+\.[0-9a-f]{8,12}\..+$", url)
WHITENOISE_IMMUTABLE_FILE_TEST = immutable_file_testIf you are struggling on how to setup a project using Django / ViteJS and Django Vite, I've made an example project here.
Thanks to Evan You for the ViteJS library.