Build Targets #

When you run vue-cli-service build, you can specify different build targets via the --target option. This allows you to use the same code base to produce different builds for different use cases.

App #

App is the default build target. In this mode:

• index.html with asset and resource hints injection
• vendor libraries split into a separate chunk for better caching
• static assets under 8KiB are inlined into JavaScript
• static assets in public are copied into output directory

Library #

vue-cli-service build --target lib --inline-vue

You can build a single entry as a library using

vue-cli-service build --target lib --name myLib [entry]

File                     Size                     Gzipped

dist/myLib.umd.min.js    13.28 kb                 8.42 kb
dist/myLib.umd.js        20.95 kb                 10.22 kb
dist/myLib.common.js     20.57 kb                 10.09 kb
dist/myLib.css           0.33 kb                  0.23 kb

The entry can be either a .js or a .vue file. If no entry is specified, src/App.vue will be used.

A lib build outputs:

• dist/myLib.common.js: A CommonJS bundle for consuming via bundlers (unfortunately, webpack currently does not support ES modules output format for bundles yet)

• dist/myLib.umd.js: A UMD bundle for consuming directly in browsers or with AMD loaders

• dist/myLib.umd.min.js: Minified version of the UMD build.

• dist/myLib.css: Extracted CSS file (can be forced into inlined by setting css: { extract: false } in vue.config.js)

Vue vs. JS/TS Entry Files #

When using a .vue file as entry, your library will directly expose the Vue component itself, because the component is always the default export.

However, when you are using a .js or .ts file as your entry, it may contain named exports, so your library will be exposed as a Module. This means the default export of your library must be accessed as window.yourLib.default in UMD builds, or as const myLib = require('mylib').default in CommonJS builds. If you don't have any named exports and wish to directly expose the default export, you can use the following webpack configuration in vue.config.js:

module.exports = {
  configureWebpack: {
    output: {
      libraryExport: 'default'
    }
  }
}

Web Component #

vue-cli-service build --target wc --inline-vue

You can build a single entry as a web component using

vue-cli-service build --target wc --name my-element [entry]

Note that the entry should be a *.vue file. Vue CLI will automatically wrap and register the component as a Web Component for you, and there's no need to do this yourself in main.js. You can use main.js as a demo app solely for development.

The build will produce a single JavaScript file (and its minified version) with everything inlined. The script, when included on a page, registers the <my-element> custom element, which wraps the target Vue component using @vue/web-component-wrapper. The wrapper automatically proxies properties, attributes, events and slots. See the docs for @vue/web-component-wrapper for more details.

Note the bundle relies on Vue being globally available on the page.

This mode allows consumers of your component to use the Vue component as a normal DOM element:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/vue"></script>
<script src="path/to/my-element.js"></script>

<!-- use in plain HTML, or in any other framework -->
<my-element></my-element>

Bundle that Registers Multiple Web Components #

When building a web component bundle, you can also target multiple components by using a glob as entry:

vue-cli-service build --target wc --name foo 'src/components/*.vue'

When building multiple web components, --name will be used as the prefix and the custom element name will be inferred from the component filename. For example, with --name foo and a component named HelloWorld.vue, the resulting custom element will be registered as <foo-hello-world>.

Async Web Component #

When targeting multiple web components, the bundle may become quite large, and the user may only use a few of the components your bundle registers. The async web component mode produces a code-split bundle with a small entry file that provides the shared runtime between all the components, and registers all the custom elements upfront. The actual implementation of a component is then fetched on-demand only when an instance of the corresponding custom element is used on the page:

vue-cli-service build --target wc-async --name foo 'src/components/*.vue'

File                Size                        Gzipped

dist/foo.0.min.js    12.80 kb                    8.09 kb
dist/foo.min.js      7.45 kb                     3.17 kb
dist/foo.1.min.js    2.91 kb                     1.02 kb
dist/foo.js          22.51 kb                    6.67 kb
dist/foo.0.js        17.27 kb                    8.83 kb
dist/foo.1.js        5.24 kb                     1.64 kb

Now on the page, the user only needs to include Vue and the entry file:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/vue"></script>
<script src="path/to/foo.min.js"></script>

<!-- foo-one's implementation chunk is auto fetched when it's used -->
<foo-one></foo-one>

Using vuex in builds #

When building a Webcomponent or Library, the entry point is not main.js, but an entry-wc.js file, generated here: https://github.com/vuejs/vue-cli/blob/dev/packages/%40vue/cli-service/lib/commands/build/resolveWcEntry.js

So to use vuex in web component target, you need to initialize the store in App.vue:

import store from './store'

// ...

export default {
  store,
  name: 'App',
  // ...
}