Litestar Vite

Litestar Vite connects the Litestar backend to a Vite toolchain. It supports SPA, Template, and Inertia flows, and can proxy Vite dev traffic through your ASGI port or run Vite directly.

Features

• One-port dev: proxies Vite HTTP + WS/HMR through Litestar by default; switch to two-port with VITE_PROXY_MODE=direct.
• SSR framework support: use mode="ssr" for Astro, Nuxt, SvelteKit - proxies everything except your API routes.
• Production assets: reads Vite manifest from public/manifest.json (configurable) and serves under asset_url.
• Type-safe frontends: optional OpenAPI/routes export + @hey-api/openapi-ts via the Vite plugin.
• Inertia support: v2 protocol with session middleware and optional SPA mode.

Quick Start (SPA)

pip install litestar-vite

import os
from pathlib import Path
from litestar import Litestar
from litestar_vite import VitePlugin, ViteConfig, PathConfig

DEV_MODE = os.getenv("VITE_DEV_MODE", "true").lower() in ("true", "1", "yes")

app = Litestar(
    plugins=[VitePlugin(config=ViteConfig(
        dev_mode=DEV_MODE,
        paths=PathConfig(root=Path(__file__).parent),
    ))]
)

litestar run --reload  # Vite dev server is proxied automatically

Scaffold a frontend: litestar assets init --template vue (or react, svelte, htmx, react-inertia, vue-inertia, angular, astro, nuxt, sveltekit).

Development

To contribute or run the development project:

# Install all dependencies and build packages
make install && make build

# Install frontend dependencies for an example
uv run litestar --app-dir examples/vue-inertia assets install

# Run the development server
uv run litestar --app-dir examples/vue-inertia run

Replace vue-inertia with any other example: vue, react, svelte, react-inertia, htmx, angular, astro, nuxt, or sveltekit.

Template / HTMX

from pathlib import Path
from litestar import Litestar
from litestar.contrib.jinja import JinjaTemplateEngine
from litestar.template import TemplateConfig
from litestar_vite import VitePlugin, ViteConfig, PathConfig

here = Path(__file__).parent

app = Litestar(
    template_config=TemplateConfig(directory=here / "templates", engine=JinjaTemplateEngine),
    plugins=[VitePlugin(config=ViteConfig(
        dev_mode=True,
        paths=PathConfig(root=here),
    ))],
)

Inertia (v2)

Requires session middleware (32-char secret).

import os
from pathlib import Path
from litestar import Litestar
from litestar.middleware.session.client_side import CookieBackendConfig
from litestar_vite import VitePlugin, ViteConfig, PathConfig
from litestar_vite.inertia import InertiaConfig

here = Path(__file__).parent
SECRET_KEY = os.environ.get("SECRET_KEY", "development-only-secret-32-chars")
session = CookieBackendConfig(secret=SECRET_KEY.encode("utf-8"))

app = Litestar(
    middleware=[session.middleware],
    plugins=[VitePlugin(config=ViteConfig(
        dev_mode=True,
        paths=PathConfig(root=here),
        inertia=InertiaConfig(root_template="index.html"),
    ))],
)

Meta-frameworks (Astro, Nuxt, SvelteKit)

Use mode="ssr" (or mode="framework") to proxy non-API routes to the framework's dev server:

import os
from pathlib import Path
from litestar import Litestar
from litestar_vite import VitePlugin, ViteConfig, PathConfig

here = Path(__file__).parent
DEV_MODE = os.getenv("VITE_DEV_MODE", "true").lower() in ("true", "1", "yes")

app = Litestar(
    plugins=[
        VitePlugin(config=ViteConfig(
            mode="ssr",
            dev_mode=DEV_MODE,
            paths=PathConfig(root=here),
        ))
    ],
)

Proxy Modes

| Mode | Alias | Use Case | |------|-------|----------| | vite | - | SPAs - proxies Vite assets only (default) | | direct | - | Two-port dev - expose Vite port directly | | proxy | ssr | Meta-frameworks - proxies everything except API routes |

Production Deployment

Astro (static): Astro generates static HTML by default. Build and serve with Litestar:

litestar --app-dir examples/astro assets install
litestar --app-dir examples/astro assets build
VITE_DEV_MODE=false litestar --app-dir examples/astro run

Nuxt/SvelteKit (SSR): These run their own Node servers. Deploy as two services:

# Terminal 1: SSR server
litestar --app-dir examples/nuxt assets build
litestar --app-dir examples/nuxt assets serve

# Terminal 2: Litestar API
VITE_DEV_MODE=false litestar --app-dir examples/nuxt run --port 8001

Type generation

VitePlugin(config=ViteConfig(types=True))  # enable exports

litestar assets generate-types  # one-off or CI

CLI cheat sheet

• litestar assets doctor — diagnose/fix config
• litestar assets init --template react|vue|svelte|... — scaffold frontend
• litestar assets build / serve — build or watch
• litestar assets deploy --storage gcs://bucket/assets — upload via fsspec
• litestar assets generate-types — OpenAPI + routes → TS types
• litestar assets install — install frontend deps with the configured executor

Doctor command highlights

• Prints Python vs Vite config snapshot (asset URLs, bundle/hot paths, ports, modes).
• Flags missing hot file (dev proxy), missing manifest (prod), type-gen exports, env/config mismatches, and plugin install issues.
• --fix can rewrite simple vite.config values (assetUrl, bundleDir, hotFile, type paths) after creating a backup.

Links

• Docs: https://litestar-org.github.io/litestar-vite/
• Examples: examples/ (react, vue, svelte, react-inertia, vue-inertia, astro, nuxt, sveltekit, htmx)
• Real-world example: litestar-fullstack - Full-featured application using litestar-vite
• Issues: https://github.com/litestar-org/litestar-vite/issues/