Dynamic Imports

Vite uses rollup under the hood which supports dynamic imports just like webpack and other bundlers but it has a small flaw. Well, not so much a flaw but rather a consideration that was never put to thought simply because of how AEM ClientLibs work.

The import rewriter takes the ES module import paths and converts them into AEM friendly paths automatically.

Vite Plugin

AEM Vite provides a plugin that will rewrite dynamic import paths to your /etc.clientlibs proxy path.

npm

npm install -D @aem-vite/import-rewriter

pnpm

pnpm add -D @aem-vite/import-rewriter

yarn

yarn add -D @aem-vite/import-rewriter

bun

bun add -D @aem-vite/import-rewriter

TIP

This plugin is already included by default in @aem-vite/vite-aem-plugin. Refer to the below for further configuration options.

Configuration

Getting this plugin configured is really simple, all it requires is your ClientLib public path.

import { bundlesImportRewriter } from '@aem-vite/import-rewriter'; 

export default defineConfig(() => ({
  plugins: [
    bundlesImportRewriter({ 
      publicPath: '/etc.clientlibs/<project>/clientlibs/clientlib-site', 
      resourcesPath: 'resources/js', 
    }), 
  ],
}));

Plugin options

Property Name	Type	Required
caching Instruct import rewriter how to handle AEM caching.	object	No
publicPath The AEM proxy path to your ClientLib directory.	string	Yes
resourcesPath The folder where Vite generated JavaScript resources.	string	Yes

Caching options

Property Name	Type	Required	Default
enabled Should caching support be utilised during builds?	boolean	Yes	-
keyFormat Long term cache key format.	string	No	lc-%s-lc
minification Should .min be added to the import path?	boolean	No	false

How This Works?

Under the hood es-module-lexer is used to parse the rollup chunk source and identifies all of the import statements. Once identified, they are parsed and all instances that use path patterns such as ./ or ../ will get replaced with publicPath configured in your plugin configuration.

By rewriting the imports we solve another issue and that is we prevent Vite adding duplicate imports via its dynamic import polyfill transformer.

Circular imports

In addition to handling import paths, the main entry path is also rewritten to the correct AEM ClientLib path to ensure ES module imports behave correctly in AEM.

Caching and Minification

So your code doesn't use the wrong path when in a testing, staging or production environment, it is good practice to dynamically switch on minification for AEM Vite using an environment variable via your Maven pom.xml file.

The below showcases this using Adobe Cloud Manager as an example by looking for a CM_BUILD environment variable and setting a Maven property called aem.caching. This Maven property can then be passed onto frontend-maven-plugin which can subsequently be passed onto your Vite configuration.

A note about the <arguments> property

This property assumes you already have an npm script called build in your package.json file.

<properties>
  <aem.caching>false</aem.caching>
</properties>

<build>
  <plugins>
    <plugin>
      <groupId>com.github.eirslett</groupId>
      <artifactId>frontend-maven-plugin</artifactId>

      <executions>
        <execution>
          <id>build-fed</id>
          <phase>initialize</phase>
          <goals>
            <goal>yarn</goal>
          </goals>
          <configuration>
            <arguments>build --config ./path/to/vite.config.js</arguments>
            <environmentVariables>
              <AEM_CACHING>${aem.caching}</AEM_CACHING>
            </environmentVariables>
          </configuration>
        </execution>
      </executions>
    </plugin>
  </plugins>
</build>

<profiles>
  <profile>
    <id>cmBuild</id>
    <activation>
      <property>
        <name>env.CM_BUILD</name>
      </property>
    </activation>
    <properties>
      <aem.caching>true</aem.caching>
    </properties>
  </profile>
</profiles>

Setting the Vite configuration

From there, you can update your Vite configuration to look for AEM_CACHING and then enable caching and minification. An assumption is made that caching and minification are both enabled, if you need separation, add another Maven profile to set another property/environment variable.

import { bundlesImportRewriter } from '@aem-vite/import-rewriter';

const needsCaching = process.env.AEM_CACHING === 'true'; 

export default defineConfig(({ command, mode }) => ({
  plugins: [
    // ... all other plugins before, 'bundlesImportRewriter' must be last
    bundlesImportRewriter({
      publicPath: '/etc.clientlibs/<project>/clientlibs/clientlib-site',
      resourcesPath: 'resources/js',

      caching: { 
        enabled: command === 'build' && mode === 'production' && needsCaching, 
        minification: needsCaching, 
      }, 
    }),
  ],
}));