@jens4m/unbase-pages

Keeps draft pages out of a site's production build. A page marked as a draft stays off the live site however often the rest is published, while previews and the dev server show it as it is.

It is a build step only: an Astro integration and a Vite plugin for React Router apps. Nothing it does reaches a visitor's browser, and it never calls a hosted service. Made for Unbase, which writes the list of drafts; it works the same without it.

npm install --save-exact @jens4m/unbase-pages

Astro

// astro.config.mjs
import { defineConfig } from "astro/config";
import sitemap from "@astrojs/sitemap";
import unbasePages from "@jens4m/unbase-pages/astro";

export default defineConfig({
  // Last, or at least after sitemap() and comment-modus: it cleans the page lists they write.
  integrations: [sitemap(), unbasePages()],
});

Vite + React Router

// vite.config.ts
import react from "@vitejs/plugin-react";
import { unbasePages } from "@jens4m/unbase-pages/vite";

export default { plugins: [react(), unbasePages()] };

Which pages are drafts

unbase.pages.json at the app's root lists them. Without the file, or without a draft in it, the build is untouched.

{ "pages": { "/pricing-2027": { "draft": true } } }

What a production build does with a draft

• Its page is not built. Astro: the page file compiles to an empty page, so nothing it imports is bundled, and its HTML is removed. React Router: its <Route /> leaves the router and its module becomes empty, so the address falls to the app's own Not Found.
• Its address leaves every page list: sitemaps, comment-modus's pages.json and content map, and the entries the page owns in Astro's content store.
• The output is checked for its text. If a sentence only the draft has is still in a served file, the build stops.

Which builds are production

UNBASE_DEPLOY_CONTEXT (production, preview, development) when it is set; otherwise a dev server is development, and the host decides (VERCEL_ENV, Netlify's CONTEXT). Anything else counts as production, so a draft only shows where a host says it is a preview. NODE_ENV is never read: previews are production-optimised builds too.

Fails closed

A production build stops, with the page and the reason, when a draft cannot be kept out: a dynamic route, a page another file imports, content it cannot attribute to the page, an invalid unbase.pages.json, or a draft's text still in the output. Mark the page as ready, or fix the reason, and build again.

Removing it

Publish or delete the drafts first: without the package, a draft in unbase.pages.json is simply built. Then remove the package, its line in the config, and unbase.pages.json.

Exports

| | | |---|---| | @jens4m/unbase-pages/astro | The Astro integration (default export, and unbasePages) | | @jens4m/unbase-pages/vite | The Vite plugin (unbasePages) | | @jens4m/unbase-pages | The core: discovering a site's pages and checking a draft, as pure functions on the app's files |

Node 18.17 or newer. MIT licence.

Developing

The source lives in the Unbase repository, kit/pages/. core.mjs is the one implementation of page discovery and the draft check; Unbase's backend runs an exact copy (supabase/functions/_shared/pages-core.mjs, and a test fails when they differ). After changing it: cp kit/pages/core.mjs supabase/functions/_shared/pages-core.mjs.

• node --test kit/pages/test/core.test.mjs (also in the repository's npm test).
• A11, the acceptance test, on lab sites only: npm run test:a11 -- vibe (the Lovable-shaped fixture in test/fixtures/lab-vibe) and npm run test:a11 -- astro --dir <lab copy> (a git repository without a remote). It needs playwright-core (PLAYWRIGHT_CORE=<path>) and Chrome (CHROME_PATH).