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 and production, all scripts are included as modules ([type=module]).
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.

Loading assets from a CDN

By default, django-vite will try to load a local manifest.json.

If you want django-vite to fetch the manifest from a non-standard source like S3, you can subclass DjangoViteAppClient and override its ManifestClient. Below is a minimal example:

# myapp/django_vite_s3.py
import json
import boto3
from django_vite.core.asset_loader import ManifestClient, DjangoViteAppClient

class S3ManifestClient(ManifestClient):
    def load_manifest(self):
        s3 = boto3.client("s3")
        res = s3.get_object(Bucket='django-vite-public-example', Key='manifest.json')
        manifest_content = res["Body"].read()
        return json.loads(manifest_content)

class S3DjangoViteAppClient(DjangoViteAppClient):
    ManifestClient = S3ManifestClient

Then configure your app to use your custom S3DjangoViteAppClient:

# settings.py
from django_vite.core.asset_loader import DjangoViteConfig

DJANGO_VITE = {
    "default": DjangoViteConfig(
        dev_mode=False,
        app_client_class="myapp.django_vite_s3.S3DjangoViteAppClient",
        ...
    )
}

If your "django.contrib.staticfiles" is configured to use S3, then your assets should load properly without needing further configuration.

Since this feature support is a new work-in-progress, please share with the community any configurations that have worked well for you!

If you find yourself needing greater control over how static asset urls are rendered, you can modify DjangoViteAppClient.get_production_server_url:

# myapp/django_vite_s3.py
import json
import boto3
from django_vite.core.asset_loader import ManifestClient, DjangoViteAppClient

class S3ManifestClient(ManifestClient):
    def load_manifest(self):
        s3 = boto3.client("s3")
        res = s3.get_object(Bucket='django-vite-public-example', Key='manifest.json')
        manifest_content = res["Body"].read()
        return json.loads(manifest_content)

class S3DjangoViteAppClient(DjangoViteAppClient):
    ManifestClient = S3ManifestClient

    def get_production_server_url(self, path: str) -> str:
        # Make additional charge here as needed
        ...

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": {
    ...
  }
}

Spe

django-vite

Description