@pika/web + TypeScript + Vue Example
Example using TypeScript, Vue, and @pika/web, a new ESM bundler. Uses Sass for styling.
Other Languages
Example
npm i
npm start
It’ll run a multi-page app at localhost:5000
.
Vue-specific setup
Because we’re running Vue as an ESM package, there are a few key things we’ll have to do:
- We can’t use the default
vue
package; we’ll have to use the browser ESM version (/dist/vue.esm.browser.js
) - TypeScript doesn’t know what the types are for the browser ESM version, so
we’ll have to trick TypeScript into using
vue
but swapping it out after TypeScript runs. - TypeScript’s JSX conversion doesn’t work for Vue, so we need
@vue/babel-preset-app
to convert it for us.
Let’s step through these one-by-one.
Using an alternate library build
TypeScript demands we use the following:
import Vue from "/web_modules/vue.js";
However we need /web_modules/vue/dist/vue.esm.browser.js
for our ES Modules
app. Fortunately babel-plugin-transform-rename-import
was made exactly for
this kind of situation. We’ll install that and modify .babelrc
:
{
"plugins": [
[
"transform-rename-import",
{
"replacements": [
{
"original": "/web_modules/vue.js",
"replacement": "/web_modules/vue/dist/vue.esm.browser.js"
}
]
}
]
]
}
And we’ll tell @pika/web to load that one instead in package.json
:
"@pika/web": {
"webDependencies": [
"vue/dist/vue.esm.browser.js",
]
},
We’ll set up Babel to run in the next step.
Compiling Vue JSX
TypeScript’s JSX conversion doesn’t work well with Vue’s compiler.
Fortunately Vue ships a @vue/babel-preset-app
Babel preset that will take
care of everything. To use that we need to configure TypeScript to understand
JSX without transforming it. That’s what the { "jsx": "preserve" }
option
is for in tsconfig.json
:
"compilerOptions": {
"jsx": "preserve",
}
Now if we run tsc
, we end up with a whole bunch of .jsx
files in our
directory:
public
├── components
│ ├── Home.jsx
│ └── Meredith.jsx
└── index.jsx
That’s actually a blessing in disguise that the browser can’t read those.
Next, we install @vue/babel-preset-app
and add it to .babelrc
:
{
+ "presets": ["@vue/babel-preset-app"],
"plugins": [
[
"transform-rename-import",
{
"replacements": [
{
"original": "/web_modules/vue.js",
"replacement": "/web_modules/vue/dist/vue.esm.browser.js"
}
]
}
]
]
}
Let’s target our new .jsx
files and nothing else. In package.json
:
"scripts": {
"build:js": "babel public --out-dir public -x .jsx",
"build:js:watch": "babel --watch public --out-dir public -x .jsx"
}
This will allow us to run npm run build:js
to convert all .jsx
files to
.js
:
public
├── components
│ ├── Home.js
│ ├── Home.jsx
│ ├── Meredith.js
│ └── Meredith.jsx
├── index.js
└── index.jsx
We can even --watch
those .jsx
files with Babel and we won’t enter an
endless loop! Because in this setup, TypeScript will only convert .tsx
.jsx
and Babel will only convert .jsx
➡️ .js
so there’s no overlap (nor
will either compiler recompile their own files over and over again).
Why not just only use Babel?
You can use TypeScript’s Babel plugin in situations like this, and it will save a step. However, you don’t get TypeScript’s full typechecking features if you use Babel. And personally, that’s not worth it for me. A few extra steps are always worth type safety.