ViteJS: Modern, Super-Fast and Next Generation Frontend Tooling
Vite or ViteJs is one of the primary sources of front-end tooling, allowing developers to enhance the development methodology, leading to a faster and more impactful output. With features like instant server start, fully-typed APIs, and universal plugins, Vitejs web application development experience will be significantly improved.
ViteJs creator Evan You, created this tooling solution with a dev server that bundles the code for production. While it allows developers to set up a development environment for Vue, it can also do the same for React and Vanilla JavaScript applications.
In this guide, we will explore some of the amazing features and functions of ViteJs. Plus, we will know the reasons why every frontend development company is going berserk over working with ViteJs.
Must Read: Full-Stack vs. MEAN Stack vs. MERN Stack: How to Choose the Right Stack?
What is ViteJS?
At the basic level, Vite is a tool for scaffolding, bundling, and building projects. Before tools like Vite, developers were dependent on JavaScript to add some fancy elements to the application. While solutions like Vite are based on JavaScript only, they offer more features that can be added in less time and effort.
It’s a JavaScript server and bundler used for delivering source files over ECMAScript 6 module (ESM). Due to this, ViteJs has gained its signature speed and efficiency in starting and reloading solutions. Vite is known to provide the modernity and speed to the development projects in three ways;
- ECMAScript Support: The code we write in ViteJs is not bundled in a Webpack. Instead, because ViteJs is compatible with ECMAScript 6, it can extract modules when the code is imported. All of this leads to eliminating the Build step completely, giving it the speed while the application works on different compatible browsers.
- Faster Compilation: Because of Vite’s compatibility with esbuild, the codes and libraries are imported with speed. Esbuild is itself a fast-processing tool, and it prebundles dependencies more than JavaScript’s WebPack.
- Usage of Rollup: When Vite undergoes bundling, it uses Rollup, which leads to a smooth development process. This is because when working with Vite, the bundling process is not necessary until the stage the code is ready for production.
Vitejs was introduced as a development server for Vue Single File Components (SFCs). With continuous additions, it has today evolved into a no-bundle JavaScript development server. Today, Vite is compatible with several web frameworks and is revered as the best tool for creating a smooth, faster, and lean workflow for creating modern web applications.
Let’s Understand the Working of ViteJs
To start working with Vite, you only need to install a couple of plugins, configure it a little, and begin developing. Vite’s workings resemble the process tools like Svelte and Snowpack follow. From the former, it extracts the methods of compilation, and from the latter, it learns how JavaScript features are leveraged.
Collectively the developers will experience a smoother and faster development experience. Vite serves the browser’s native ES modules, leading to a modern development environment. Due to this, ViteJs foregoes bundling.
Moreover, while working with Vite, the developers can use templates, which are basically starter files, for several frameworks and the Vanilla JavaScript. Because you won’t have to rebuild the entire bundle when working with ViteJs, it transforms HMR updates making them faster, no matter the size of the application.
Main Features and Functions of ViteJs
Until now, we have understood that ViteJs make development faster, smoother, and leaner. But how it happens rests on the wide array of features that accompany. Here they are;
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Faster Builds
We have earlier mentioned Esbuild, which is a bundler based on the Go programming language. This is also one of the reasons why Vite has become one of the best frontend frameworks.
Due to the Esbuild, ViteJs is 10 to 100 times faster compared to any other frontend framework offering similar services. Vite uses Esbuild to convert CommonJS modules into ESM for dependencies, which improves performance during build time.
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Better Support from CSS
ViteJs has several new features and functions added with reference to CSS. These include;
- CSS splitting
- URL rebasing
- CSS modules
- PortCSS
And some features are added to the framework. The best part is that developers can leverage these features without any sort of configuration. Vite’s resolver enhances the functions (@import and url() paths) in CSS by catering to aliases and NPM dependencies.
The CSS modules behavior can be configured with css.modules and it provides built in support for several CSS preprocessors. These include .scss, .sass, .less, .styl, and .stylus.
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Compatible with Several Frameworks
ViteJs web application development is not limited to Vue. It is also compatible with React, Vue.Js, and Preact. While these are definite, Vitejs boilerplate also supports Vanilla JavaScript and TypeScript.
Most of all, ViteJs is a framework-agnostic technology. This means that it provides a consistent tooling experience for every type of framework it supports.
It can import .ts (TypeScript) files out of the box. Here again, it uses esbuild to transpile TypeScript into JavaScript, making this process 20 to 30 times faster than Vanilla tsc. At the same time, the HMR updates in the browser where the application is running will show in less than 50 milliseconds.
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Supports SSR
Vite has experimental support for server side rendering (SSR). The official notification clarifies that the SSR support is still experimental. So if you encounter bugs while developing, it may be because of the unsupported use cases.
To the extent, ViteJs supports SSR, the same is provided for React and Vue3. Here Vite forwards APIs and the required constructs for loading and updating
ESM-based source.
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Plugins in ViteJs
The plugins we can use in ViteJs are based on Rollup, and they have been added with some Vite-specific options. This provides the double advantage of extending ViteJs functionality in terms of SSR and dev server while leveraging the mature build of Rollup.
These are the five major functions associated with ViteJs that are set to streamline and enhance the development environment. Being billed as ViteJs next generation frontend tool, it has achieved 42,800 stars on GitHub, stating its popularity among the development community.
What are the Advantages of using ViteJs?
The development of ViteJs is backed by a purpose and several reasons, which can be termed as issues developers faced before Vite. One of these issues was the progressive complexity of the applications built with JavaScript and other development languages.
Specifically for frontend functions, we have tools like Webpack, Rollup, and Parcel, which have helped enhance the development experience significantly. Plus, the large development projects have thousands of modules.
With everything considered, the developers can get troubled with performance issues leading to longer wait time, and file edits can take time to reflect in the browser. These might be intricate systems, but they have a great impact on the development experience.
- ViteJs Improves the Development Experience: When web applications are built with ViteJs, their modules are divided into two parts; dependencies and source code. Dependencies are JavaScript elements that do not change often during the development process.
Source code consists of the non-plain JavaScript elements that need transformation time and again. In the former, we can include ESM and CommonJS components, and in the latter, JSX, CSS, Vue, or Svelte components.What ViteJs does is it serves the source code over native ESM, letting the browser take over some part of the bundler’s job. Also, Vite only transforms the source code components as and when the browser requests the same.
- Hot Module Replacement (HMR): HMR is another one of the amazing functions and advantages of ViteJs. Basically, HMR allows changes in the JavaScript bundlers in the browser without refreshing the same. This means that any change will be directly and immediately reflected in the browser.
But this functionality is available in other development tools as well, which offer the same hot reload effect in modules. However, the speed here reduces with the increasing size of the application. But let’s see how ViteJs is tackling this issue.The smart move here is decoupling of the HMR from the total number of modules. Due to this, the developers working on Vitejs web application development will experience faster development speed irrespective of their size.
- Extend Control with Configuration: Another advantage of working with ViteJs is the ability to extend or gain full control of the project. With vite.config.js or vite.config.ts, developers can gain access to the existing working directory or the entire project from the base root directory.
Plus, the developers can also mention a single config file and gain access to it via vite-config my config.js. And it does not end here. ViteJs gives you an extensive amount of configuration capabilities.You can also add support for custom file transformation by using a Rollup plugin for build functions and work with Koa middleware in the configuration file.
- Usage of Plugins: Plugins are used to extend the functionality and efficiency of the development component and the interface. This means that the developers can access the existing variety of plugins in the Rollup but also extend the same to the dev server and SSR functionality.
Use Cases of ViteJs
Web applications are one of the core development aspects of ViteJs. But there are other solutions that can be built with this technology. These include;
- Single Page Applications: Single Page Applications (SPA) is the default setting in ViteJs. If not configured, the end product of ViteJs will be a standard SPA with integrations from Rollup. The SPAs can then be deployed on Netlify or any other platform compatible with this type of application.
- Server-Side Rendering: As we have mentioned above, SSR capabilities are limited in ViteJs. While the developers can begin working with it, any issues cannot be addressed if they fall in the category of unsupported cases.
- Static Site Generator: ViteJs has an SSG plugin that can be used to create static websites.
- Backend Integration: ViteJs has provided official documentation for working on the background integration.
To Sum It Up
After everything we have read, it is clear that ViteJs is an amazing tool. Even though it just entered the market some time back, it has received an amazing response from the development community. While it is giving tough competition to platforms like Snowpack and Parcel, ViteJs has the potential to surpass them with the help of its unique and pertinent functionalities.
ViteJs enhance the speed and performance of the development tasks, which leads to better execution of the applications and ultimately benefits the businesses. Billed as one of the best frontend frameworks, every top web development company today is set to include ViteJs in their tech stack and leverage its benefits to provide great solutions to their clients.
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