Create your own vue 3 plugin and publish into NPM

First create a vue 3 project using vite

npm create vite@latest test-vite-ts -- --template vue-ts

Install rollup dev dependencies

npm i -D rollup rollup-plugin-vue rollup-plugin-typescript2 rollup-plugin-peer-deps-external rollup-plugin-postcss rollup-plugin-terser rollup-plugin-delete

Create a plugin

Create a plugin which creates a component BlueInput.vue which will simply shows a input with blue border, create a directory src/plugin and make a file BlueInput.vue with following code

./src/plugin/BlueInput.vue

<script setup lang="ts">
const props = defineProps<{
	label?: string;
}>();
</script>

<template>
	<div v-if="props.label">{{ props.label }}</div>
	<input class="my-blue-input" />
</template>

<style scoped>
.my-blue-input {
	border: 1px solid #00f;
	border-radius: 5px;
}
</style>

Now create index.ts with code for installing your plugin

./src/plugin/index.ts

import { App } from "vue";
import BlueInput from "./BlueInput.vue";

export default {
	install(app: App) {
		app.component("BlueInput", BlueInput);
	},
};

Test your plugin

Install your plugin in main.js

./src/main.ts

import { createApp } from "vue";
import App from "./App.vue";
import plugin from "./plugin";

const app = createApp(App);
app.use(plugin);

app.mount("#app");

Now in App.vue try your plugin and check if it is working as expected

./src/App.vue

<template>
	<blue-input label="My Blue Input" />
</template>

Now test your plugin by running

npm run dev

Setup rollup.config.js file

Create a file at root with following code

./rollup.config.js

import vue from "rollup-plugin-vue";
import typescript from "rollup-plugin-typescript2";
import postcss from "rollup-plugin-postcss";
import peerDepsExternal from "rollup-plugin-peer-deps-external";
import { terser } from "rollup-plugin-terser";
import del from "rollup-plugin-delete";

export default [
	{
		input: "src/plugin/index.js",
		output: [
			{
				format: "esm",
				file: "dist/index.mjs",
				plugins: [terser()],
			},
			{
				format: "cjs",
				file: "dist/index.js",
				plugins: [terser()],
			},
		],
		plugins: [
			vue(),
			typescript({
				check: false,
				tsconfigOverride: {
					compilerOptions: {
						sourceMap: true,
						declaration: true,
						declarationMap: true,
					},
				},
			}),
			postcss(),
			peerDepsExternal(),
			del({ targets: "dist/*" }),
		],
	},
];

Now in package.json change the build script to rollup build script

./package.json

...,
"scripts": {
    "build": "rollup -c"
},
...

:grey_exclamation: Also make sure to move vue from dependencies to devDependencies since we only need vue for testing our plugin in local

Now run command

npm run build

Now you can see the compiled files inside ./dist directory

:bulb: To avoid creating a sub directory 'plugin' inside ./dist directory, update your tsconfig.json file and change all occurance of src/ to src/plugin/

Make everything ready to publish your plugin to NPM

Before publishing, in package.json set files to ./dist so that everything other than ./dist directory is ignored while publishing, also set main and module to point the js and mjs files created in ./dist directory

./package.json

  ...,
  "main": "dist/index.js",
  "module": "dist/index.mjs",
  "files": [
    "dist/*"
  ],
  ...

You can also add your version, description, author, licence, repo ... in your package.json

:warning: Make sure package name mentioned in package.json is unique and remove the line "private": true if present

Publishing to NPM registry

Run the following command to login into your NPM account

npm login

Once you are logged in run this command to publish your plugin

npm publish --access=public

You can go to your NPM account in browser and checkout the new package you just created and try installing and using it in any other vue projects.

:heart: HAPPY CODING :heart: