vue-lazy-hydration

Lazy hydration of server-side rendered Vue.js components.

Motivation

vue-lazy-hydration is a renderless Vue.js component to improve Estimated Input Latency and Time to Interactive of server-side rendered Vue.js applications. This can be achieved by using lazy hydration to delay the hydration of pre-rendered HTML.

Install

npm install vue-lazy-hydration

import LazyHydrate from 'vue-lazy-hydration';
// ...

export default {
  // ...
  components: {
    LazyHydrate,
    // ...
  },
  // ...
};

Basic example

In the example below you can see the four hydration modes in action.

<template>
  <div class="ArticlePage">
    <LazyHydrate when-idle>
      <ImageSlider/>
    </LazyHydrate>

    <LazyHydrate never>
      <ArticleContent :content="article.content"/>
    </LazyHydrate>

    <LazyHydrate when-visible>
      <AdSlider/>
    </LazyHydrate>

    <!-- `on-interaction` listens for a `focus` event by default ... -->
    <LazyHydrate on-interaction>
      <CommentForm :article-id="article.id"/>
    </LazyHydrate>
    <!-- ... but you can listen for any event you want ... -->
    <LazyHydrate on-interaction="click">
      <CommentForm :article-id="article.id"/>
    </LazyHydrate>
    <!-- ... or even multiple events. -->
    <LazyHydrate :on-interaction="['click', 'touchstart']">
      <CommentForm :article-id="article.id"/>
    </LazyHydrate>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
import LazyHydrate from 'vue-lazy-hydration';

export default {
  components: {
    LazyHydrate,
    AdSlider: () => import('./AdSlider.vue'),
    ArticleContent: () => import('./ArticleContent.vue'),
    CommentForm: () => import('./CommentForm.vue'),
    ImageSlider: () => import('./ImageSlider.vue'),
  },
  // ...
};
</script>

1. Because it is at the very top of the page, the ImageSlider should be hydrated eventually, but we can wait until the browser is idle.
2. The ArticleContent component is never hydrated on the client, which also means it will never be interactive (static content only).
3. Next we can see the AdSlider beneath the article content, this component will most likely not be visible initially so we can delay hydration until the point it becomes visible.
4. At the very bottom of the page we want to render a CommentForm but because most people only read the article and don't leave a comment, we can save resources by only hydrating the component whenever it actually receives focus.

Advanced

Manually trigger hydration

Sometimes you might want to prevent a component from loading initially but you want to activate it on demand if a certain action is triggered. You can do this by manually triggering the component to hydrate like you can see in the following example.

<template>
  <div class="MyComponent">
    <button @click="editModeActive = true">
      Activate edit mode
    </button>
    <LazyHydrate never :trigger-hydration="editModeActive">
      <UserSettingsForm/>
    </LazyHydrate>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
import LazyHydrate from 'vue-lazy-hydration';

export default {
  components: {
    LazyHydrate,
    UserSettingsForm: () => import('./UserSettingsForm.vue'),
  },
  data() {
    return {
      editModeActive: false,
    };
  },
  // ...
};
</script>

Multiple root nodes

Because of how this package works, it is not possible to nest multiple root nodes inside of a single <LazyHydrate>. But you can wrap multiple components with a <div>.

<template>
  <div class="MyComponent">
    <LazyHydrate never>
      <div>
        <ArticleHeader/>
        <ArticleContent/>
        <ArticleMetaInfo/>
        <ArticleFooter/>
      </div>
    </LazyHydrate>
  </div>
</template>

Intersection Observer options

Internally the Intersection Observer API is used to determine if a component is visible or not. You can provide Intersection Observer options to the when-visible property to configure the Intersection Observer.

<template>
  <div class="MyComponent">
    <LazyHydrate :when-visible="{ rootMargin: '100px' }">
      <ArticleFooter/>
    </LazyHydrate>
  </div>
</template>

For a list of possible options please take a look at the Intersection Observer API documentation on MDN.

Import Wrappers

Additionally to the <LazyHydrate> wrapper component you can also use Import Wrappers to lazy load and hydrate certain components.

<template>
  <div class="ArticlePage">
    <ImageSlider/>
    <ArticleContent :content="article.content"/>
    <AdSlider/>
    <CommentForm :article-id="article.id"/>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
import {
  hydrateOnInteraction,
  hydrateNever,
  hydrateWhenIdle,
  hydrateWhenVisible,
} from 'vue-lazy-hydration';

export default {
  components: {
    AdSlider: hydrateWhenVisible(
      () => import('./AdSlider.vue'),
      // Optional.
      { observerOptions: { rootMargin: '100px' } },
    ),
    ArticleContent: hydrateNever(
      () => import('./ArticleContent.vue'),
      { ignoredProps: ['content'] },
    ),
    CommentForm: hydrateOnInteraction(
      () => import('./CommentForm.vue'),
      // `focus` is the default event.
      { event: 'focus', ignoredProps: ['articleId'] },
    ),
    ImageSlider: hydrateWhenIdle(() => import('./ImageSlider.vue')),
  },
  // ...
};
</script>

Caveats

1. Properties passed to a wrapped component are rendered as an HTML attribute on the root element.
   E.g. <ArticleContent :content="article.content"/> would render to <div class="ArticleContent" content="Lorem ipsum dolor ...">Lorem ipsum dolor ...</div> as long as you don't provide content as an ignored property the way you can see in the example above.
2. When using hydrateWhenVisible and hydrateOnInteraction all instances of a certain component are immediately hydrated as soon as one of the instances becomes visible or is interacted with.

Benchmarks

Without lazy hydration

With lazy hydration

Caveats

This plugin will not work as advertised if you're not using it in combination with SSR. Although it should work with every pre-rendering approach (like Prerender SPA Plugin, Gridsome, ...) I've only tested it with Nuxt.js so far.

Articles

• abomination: a Concept for a Static HTML / Dynamic JavaScript Hybrid Application
• How to Drastically Reduce Estimated Input Latency and Time to Interactive of SSR Vue.js Applications

Credits

The code of the current implementation of this package is based on a similar package created by Rahul Kadyan. Thanks to his code I'm finally able to build a clean solution for what I dreamed of when I created the abomination.

Testing

Because the core functionality of vue-lazy-hydration heavily relies on browser APIs like IntersectionObserver and requestIdleCallback(), it is tough to write meaningful unit tests without having to write numerous mocks. Because of that, we mostly use integration tests and some performance benchmarks to test the functionality of this package.

Integration tests

Execute the following commands to run the integration tests:

npm run test:integration:build
npm run test:integration

Performance tests

Execute the following commands to run the performance benchmark:

npm run test:perf:build
npm run test:perf

About

Author

Markus Oberlehner
Website: https://markus.oberlehner.net
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaOberlehner
PayPal.me: https://paypal.me/maoberlehner
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/maoberlehner

License

MIT