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What is preloading? Preloading denotes the practice of loading assets (JavaScript, CSS, images, etc.) before the browser discovers them in HTML/CSS/JavaScript code. That way you can reduce the network round trips required before the browser starts discovering and loading all dependencies.

By default, Vike automatically inject tags to your HTML such as:

  • <script type="module" src="script.js">
  • <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css">
  • <link rel="preload" href="font.ttf" as="font" type="font/ttf">

It does so using a preload strategy that works for most users, but you can use injectFilter() to implement a custom preload strategy.

To improve preloading performance, you can use Early hints which Vike automatically generates.

See also API > prefetchStaticAssets.

Early hints

You can use pageContext.httpResponse.earlyHints for adding early hints (103 Early Hint).

103 Early Hint is the official successor of the now deprecated HTTP2/Push.

// server.js
 
import { renderPage } from 'vike/server'
 
app.get('*', async (req, res) => {
  const pageContext = await renderPage({ urlOriginal: req.originalUrl } )
  const { earlyHints } = pageContext.httpResponse
  // For example with Node.js 18:
  res.writeEarlyHints({ link: earlyHints.map((e) => e.earlyHintLink) })
})
type PageContext = {
  httpResponse: {
    earlyHints: {
      earlyHintLink: string // Early hint value
      assetType: "image" | "script" | "font" | "style" | "audio" | "video" | "document" |
                 "fetch" | "track" | "worker" | "embed" | "object" | null
      mediaType: string // MIME type
      src: string // Asset's URL
      isEntry: boolean // true  ⇒ asset is an entry
                       // false ⇒ asset is a dependency of an entry
    }[]
  }
}

See also:

injectFilter()

If Vike's default preload strategy doesn't work for you, you can customize which and where preload/asset tags are injected.

// /renderer/+onRenderHtml.js
 
export { onRenderHtml }
 
async function onRenderHtml(pageContext) {
  // ...
 
  const documentHtml = escapeInject`<!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
      <body>
        <div id="page-view">${stream}</div>
      </body>
    </html>`
 
  const injectFilter = (assets) => {
    assets.forEach(asset => {
      // Preload images
      if (asset.assetType === 'image') {
        asset.inject = 'HTML_BEGIN'
      }
    })
  }
 
  return { documentHtml, injectFilter }
}

See API > injectFilter().

Assets Manifest

By using getGlobalContextSync() or getGlobalContextAsync(), you can access the so-called "assets manifest": the dependency graph of your app's static assets.

The assets manifest is only available in production.

See also