Django Vite

Integration of ViteJS in a Django project.

Installation
- Django
- ViteJS
- Assets
Usage
Vite Legacy Plugin
Multi-app configuration
Configuration Variables
Notes
- Whitenoise
Examples
Thanks

Installation

Django

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',
    ...
]

ViteJS

Follow instructions on https://vitejs.dev/guide/. And mostly the SSR part.

Then in your ViteJS config file :

Set the base options the same as your STATIC_URL Django setting.
Set the build.outDir path to where you want the assets to compiled.
Set the build.manifest options to manifest.json.
As you are in SSR and not in SPA, you don't have an index.html that ViteJS can use to determine which files to compile. You need to tell it directly in build.rollupOptions.input.

export default defineConfig({
  ...
  base: "/static/",
  build: {
    ...
    manifest: "manifest.json",
    outDir: resolve("./assets"),
    rollupOptions: {
      input: {
        <unique key>: '<path to your asset>'
      }
    }
  }
})

Assets

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';

Usage

Configuration

Define a default DJANGO_VITE configuration in your settings.py.

DJANGO_VITE = {
  "default": {
    "dev_mode": True
  }
}

Or if you prefer to use the legacy module-level settings, you can use:

DJANGO_VITE_DEV_MODE = True

Be sure that the build.outDir from vite.config.js is included in STATICFILES_DIRS.

STATICFILES_DIRS = [
  BASE_DIR / "assets"
]

Dev Mode

The dev_mode/DJANGO_VITE_DEV_MODE boolean defines 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 DEBUG setting in Django. But you can do what is good for your needs.

Template tags

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_MODE is true, otherwise this will do nothing.

Then add this tag (in your <head> element too) 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 async and defer.
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 import statements.
In production mode, the library will read the manifest.json file 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 root key inside your ViteJS config file.
The path must be a key inside your manifest file manifest.json file generated by ViteJS.
In general, this path does not require a / at the beginning (follow your manifest.json file).

{% 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.

{% vite_react_refresh %}

If you're using React, this will generate the Javascript <script/> needed to support React HMR.

{% vite_react_refresh nonce="{{ request.csp_nonce }}" %}

Any kwargs passed to vite_react_refresh will be added to its generated <script/> tag. For example, if your site is configured with a Content Security Policy using django-csp you'll want to add this value for nonce.

Custom attributes

By default, all script 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" data_turbo_track="reload" %}

This line will add foo="bar", hello="world", and data-turbo-track="reload" 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.

Vite Legacy Plugin

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.

Multi-app configuration

If you would like to use django-vite with multiple vite configurations you can specify them in your settings.

DJANGO_VITE = {
  "default": {
    "dev_mode": True,
  },
  "external_app_1": {
    ...
  },
  "external_app_2": {
    ...
  }
}

Specify the app in each django-tag tag that you use in your templates. If no app is provided, it will default to using the "default" app.

{% vite_asset '<path to your asset>' %}
{% vite_asset '<path to another asset>' app="external_app_1" %}
{% vite_asset '<path to a third asset>' app="external_app_2" %}

You can see an example project here.

Configuration Variables

You can redefine these values for each app config in DJANGO_VITE in settings.py.

dev_mode

Type: bool
Default: False
Legacy Key: DJANGO_VITE_DEV_MODE

Indicates whether to serve assets via the ViteJS development server or from compiled production assets.

dev_server_protocol

Type: str
Default: "http"
Legacy Key: DJANGO_VITE_DEV_SERVER_PROTOCOL

The protocol used by the ViteJS webserver.

dev_server_host

Type: str
Default: "localhost"
Legacy Key: DJANGO_VITE_DEV_SERVER_HOST

The server.host in vite.config.js for the ViteJS development server.

dev_server_port

Type: int
Default: 5173
Legacy Key: DJANGO_VITE_DEV_SERVER_PORT

The server.port in vite.config.js for the ViteJS development server.

static_url_prefix

Type: str
Default: ""
Legacy Key: DJANGO_VITE_STATIC_URL_PREFIX

The directory prefix for static files built by ViteJS.

Use it if you want to avoid conflicts with other static files in your project.
It's used in both dev mode and production mode.
For dev mode, you also need to add this prefix inside vite config's base.
For production mode, you may need to add this to vite config's build.outDir.

Example:

# settings.py
DJANGO_VITE_STATIC_URL_PREFIX = 'bundler'
STATICFILES_DIRS = (('bundler', '/srv/app/bundler/dist'),)

// vite.config.js
export default defineConfig({
  base: '/static/bundler/',
  ...
})

manifest_path

Type: str | Path
Default: Path(settings.STATIC_ROOT) / static_url_prefix / "manifest.json"
Legacy Key: DJANGO_VITE_MANIFEST_PATH

The absolute path, including the filename, to the ViteJS manifest file located in build.outDir.

legacy_polyfills_motif

Type: str
Default: "legacy-polyfills"
Legacy Key: DJANGO_VITE_LEGACY_POLYFILLS_MOTIF

The motif used to identify assets for polyfills in the manifest.json. This is only applicable if you are using @vitejs/plugin-legacy.

ws_client_url

Type: str
Default: "@vite/client"
Legacy Key: DJANGO_VITE_WS_CLIENT_URL

The path to the HMR (Hot Module Replacement) client used in the vite_hmr_client tag.

react_refresh_url

Type: str
Default: "@react-refresh""
Legacy Key: DJANGO_VITE_REACT_REFRESH_URL

If you're using React, this will generate the Javascript needed to support React HMR.

Notes

In production mode, all generated paths are prefixed with the STATIC_URL setting of Django.

Whitenoise

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

# http://whitenoise.evans.io/en/stable/django.html#WHITENOISE_IMMUTABLE_FILE_TEST

def immutable_file_test(path, url):
    # Match vite (rollup)-generated hashes, à la, `some_file-CSliV9zW.js`
    return re.match(r"^.+[.-][0-9a-zA-Z_-]{8,12}\..+$", url)


WHITENOISE_IMMUTABLE_FILE_TEST = immutable_file_test