Vite

Frontend assets, the way a PHP framework does them: resources/js and resources/css are source, Vite compiles them into public/build, and a template asks for an entry with a directive rather than hard-coding a filename that changes on every build.

<head>
    @vite(['resources/css/app.css', 'resources/js/app.js'])
</head>

Nothing here is mandatory. An application that renders plain templates never touches any of this — the opt-in is using the directive, not enabling a feature.

The two modes

@vite renders differently depending on which artefact exists under public/:

The hot file wins when both exist, and it is checked on every render — its whole point is appearing and disappearing while the process runs. The manifest is parsed once and cached; a deploy that replaces it replaces the process too.

Missing both is never a 500: the directive renders an HTML comment naming the two commands, and the page arrives unstyled instead of down. A fresh git clone && cargo run works before npm has ever run — an application without a frontend build has simply not opted in. Misconfiguration against a build that does exist — an entry the manifest does not name, a manifest that does not parse — is a hard error.

Setup

The framework's default bootstrap attaches a resolver over <base>/public already. An application that builds its own view engine attaches one itself:

use rainier_framework::view::{TemplateEngine, Vite};

TemplateEngine::new("resources/views").with_vite(Vite::new("public"))

Vite::new takes the web root; with_build_dir moves the build directory (and the URL prefix) if yours differs.

On the JavaScript side, vite.config.js needs three things: the entries, a manifest, and something to write public/hot while the dev server runs. The sample project carries the canonical config — a ~20-line inline plugin, no extra npm dependency.

Serving the build

Rainier is the web server, so the built files need a route. The sample project's asset_controller is the pattern: a {path*} wildcard route that resolves strictly inside public/build, sets the content type by extension, and marks responses immutable — safe because Vite content-hashes every filename, so a given URL's bytes never change.

What is deliberately absent

No SSR entries, no asset helper for images, no dev-server proxying. Those can arrive when something needs them; entries-to-tags is the part every page needs on day one.