Vue-Nuxt: Why can't I see the generated HTMLs correctly?

Question

So when I type npm run generate Nuxt generates my project into the dist folder. In that folder I can find a folder called _nuxt where I have .js files and the index.html file but when I open it in a browser it doesn't show anything.

So, my question is: Aren't those static files?

When you work with the CDN served vue.js you have the html file and you click and everything is showed on the browser because those .html files are static, they don't need an internal localhost server. Why npm run generate doesn't do the same? Or how can I see those generated files?

Answer 1

As @aljazerzen explained, Vue,js doesn't do SSR out of the box, one of the aims of Nuxt.js is to provide SSR for you, as a benefit you can also generate a static version of your website. If I get what you want correctly, what you want to do is that when you open your index.html (the one that Nuxt.js generates for you) you can see your functional webpage. When you're accessing your website as a file:/// url, your browser (at least I've seen it happen with Chrome) doesn't load your .js files.

I don't have any Nuxt generated websites at hand so I can't tell you exactly why this happen. But this is my guess: when Nuxt generate those files it gives them a src that can't be accessed as file:///, maybe something as /your_js.js, that when it tries to load it, thinks it's the / of the root folder instead of relative to your website's root (/).

The solution to this problem is to serve your assets using any web server. According to Nuxt.js's documentation:

nuxt generate :Build the application and generate every route as a HTML file (used for static hosting).

You could do a quick test and use a simple web server by typing:

python -m http.server

In the folder that contains your generated assets.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Nuxt uses server side rendering.

You can read more here.

To generate static HTML files, run:

nuxt generate

Explanation: Vanilla Vue.js application is rendered only when the page loads and JavaScript can start running. This means that some clients that do not have JavaScript enabled (web crawlers) won't see the page. Also for a brief second before Vue.js can render the page, there is blank screen, when plain HTML files could already be visible.

Now, server-side rendering (SSR) is a technique for rendering a single page app (SPA) on the server and then sending a fully rendered page to the client. The client’s JavaScript bundle can then take over and the SPA can operate as normal.

This can also help with SEO and with providing meta data to social media channels.

But on the downside (as you mentioned), such application cannot be hosted at a CDN, since you have to have a Node.js process running to render the page.

In my opinion, SSR is redundant with SPAs if what you are building is actually an application and not a website. A website should mostly display information and should not be interactive. It should leverage web-based mechanisms such as links, cookies and plain HTML with CSS. In the contrast, web application (eg. Vue.js application) should be more like a mobile application: it is larger to download, but performs better and offers much more interactive experience. Such application does not need server-side rendering, since we can wait for it to load a bit more and because it shouldn't be indexed by search engines (it is not a website).