Vite Plugin Node

A vite plugin to allow you to use vite as node dev server.

Features

• All the perks from Vite plus:
• Node server HMR! (hot module replacement)
• Support Express, Fastify, Koa and Nest out of the box
• Support Custom Request Adapter
• You can choose to use esbuild or swc to compile your typescript files

Get started

---

1. Install vite and this plugin with your favorite package manager, here use npm as example:

   1npm install vite vite-plugin-node -D

   Vite version and package version match table:

   Vite	Plugin
   7.x.x	7.x.x
   6.x.x	5.x.x
   5.x.x	4.x.x
   4.x.x	3.x.x
   3.x.x	<=2.x.x

2. Create a vite.config.ts file in your project root to config vite to actually use this plugin:

   1import { defineConfig } from 'vite';
   2import { VitePluginNode } from 'vite-plugin-node';
   3
   4export default defineConfig({
   5  // ...vite configures
   6  server: {
   7    // vite server configs, for details see [vite doc](https://vitejs.dev/config/#server-host)
   8    port: 3000
   9  },
   10  plugins: [
   11    ...VitePluginNode({
   12      // Nodejs native Request adapter
   13      // currently this plugin support 'express', 'nest', 'koa' and 'fastify' out of box,
   14      // you can also pass a function if you are using other frameworks, see Custom Adapter section
   15      adapter: 'express',
   16
   17      // tell the plugin where is your project entry
   18      appPath: './app.ts',
   19
   20      // Optional, default: 'viteNodeApp'
   21      // the name of named export of you app from the appPath file
   22      exportName: 'viteNodeApp',
   23
   24      // Optional, default: false
   25      // if you want to init your app on boot, set this to true
   26      initAppOnBoot: false,
   27
   28      // Optional, default: false
   29      // if you want to reload your app on file changes, set this to true, rebounce delay is 500ms
   30      reloadAppOnFileChange: false,
   31
   32      // Optional, default: 'esbuild'
   33      // The TypeScript compiler you want to use
   34      // by default this plugin is using vite default ts compiler which is esbuild
   35      // 'swc' compiler is supported to use as well for frameworks
   36      // like Nestjs (esbuild dont support 'emitDecoratorMetadata' yet)
   37      // you need to INSTALL `@swc/core` as dev dependency if you want to use swc
   38      tsCompiler: 'esbuild',
   39
   40      // Optional, default: {
   41      // jsc: {
   42      //   target: 'es2019',
   43      //   parser: {
   44      //     syntax: 'typescript',
   45      //     decorators: true
   46      //   },
   47      //  transform: {
   48      //     legacyDecorator: true,
   49      //     decoratorMetadata: true
   50      //   }
   51      // }
   52      // }
   53      // swc configs, see [swc doc](https://swc.rs/docs/configuration/swcrc)
   54      swcOptions: {}
   55    })
   56  ],
   57});

3. Update your server entry to export your app named viteNodeApp or the name you configured.

ExpressJs

1const app = express();
2
3// your beautiful code...
4
5if (import.meta.env.PROD)
6  app.listen(3000);
7
8export const viteNodeApp = app;

More Examples:

• KoaJs
• Cloud Functions
• Fastify
• NestJs
• Apollo Server

4. Add a npm script to run the dev server:

   1"scripts": {
   2  "dev": "vite"
   3},

5. Run the script! npm run dev

Custom Adapter

If your favorite framework not supported yet, you can either create an issue to request it or use the adapter option to tell the plugin how to pass down the request to your app. You can take a look how the supported frameworks implementations from the ./src/server folder. Example:

1import { defineConfig } from 'vite';
2import { VitePluginNode } from 'vite-plugin-node';
3
4export default defineConfig({
5  plugins: [
6    ...VitePluginNode({
7      adapter({ app, server, req, res, next }) {
8        app(res, res);
9      },
10      appPath: './app.ts'
11    })
12  ]
13});

Build

This plugin leverages Vite SSR mode to build your app. All you need to do is add a build script to your package.json:

1"scripts": {
2  "build": "vite build"
3},

For more build config please check vite doc

Note: By default, starting from vite v3, the ssr buildle will be in esm format. if you want to build cjs, add ssr: { format: 'cjs' } to your vite config.

Examples

See the examples folder.

Why?

---

While frontend development tooling is evolving rapidly in recent years, backend DX is still like in stone age. No hot module replacement; Typescript recompiling slow as funk; Lack of plugin system etc. Thanks to Vite.js created by Evan You (A.K.A creator of vue.js; my biggest idol developer), makes all those dreams for backend development come true!

How?

---

Vite by design has a middleware mode, which allows us to use it programmatically inside other modules. It's originally made for SSR, so that for each request, vite can load the renderer and render the latest changes you made to your app (https://vitejs.dev/guide/ssr.html). This plugin leverages this feature to load and execute your server app entry.

You may ask, isn't super slow, since it re-compiles/reloads the entire app? The answer is NO, because vite is smart. It has a builtin module graph as a cache layer, the graph is built up the first time your app loads. After that, when you update a file, vite will only invalidate that one and its parent modules, so that for next request, only those invalidated modules need to be re-compiled which is super fast thanks to esbuild or swc.

To-Do

As this plugin just fresh developed, there are still lots ideas need to be implemented, including:

• Test with a large node project, I need y'all helps on this!
• Unit tests

Bugs

Please create an issue if you found any bugs, to help me improve this project!