Using Storybook with Angular and Vite 🎨

Storybook is a frontend workshop for building UI components and pages in isolation.

By default, Angular and Storybook uses Webpack to build and serve the Storybook application. Angular has already switched over to using Vite as a development server, so you may be interested in using Vite for other parts of your development workflow.

This post guides you through the process of switching to building and serving your Storybook with Angular using Vite. This process can be applied to any Angular project using Storybook.

Setting up Storybook

If you don't have Storybook setup already, run the following command to initialize Storybook for your project:

npx storybook@latest init --type angular

This installs the necessary Storybook dependencies, and sets up a Storybook with a few example components.

Follow the provided prompts, and commit your changes.

Installing the Storybook and Vite packages

Next, install the AnalogJS Vite Plugin for Angular and the Vite Builder for Storybook using your preferred package manager:

npm install @analogjs/vite-plugin-angular @storybook/builder-vite --save-dev

Configuring Storybook to use the Vite Builder

Update the .storybook/main.ts file to use the @storybook/builder-vite and add the viteFinal config function to configure the Vite Plugin for Angular.

import { StorybookConfig } from '@storybook/angular';
import { StorybookConfigVite } from '@storybook/builder-vite';
import { UserConfig } from 'vite';

const config: StorybookConfig & StorybookConfigVite = {
  // other config, addons, etc.
  core: {
    builder: {
      name: '@storybook/builder-vite',
      options: {
        viteConfigPath: undefined,
      },
    },
  },
  async viteFinal(config: UserConfig) {
    // Merge custom configuration into the default config
    const { mergeConfig } = await import('vite');
    const { default: angular } = await import('@analogjs/vite-plugin-angular');

    return mergeConfig(config, {
      // Add dependencies to pre-optimization
      optimizeDeps: {
        include: [
          '@storybook/angular',
          '@storybook/angular/dist/client',
          '@angular/compiler',
          '@storybook/blocks',
          'tslib',
        ],
      },
      plugins: [angular({ jit: true, tsconfig: './.storybook/tsconfig.json' })],
    });
  },
};

Remove the existing webpackFinal config function if present.

Next, Update the package.json to run the Storybook commands directly.

{
  "name": "my-app",
  "scripts": {
    "storybook": "storybook dev --port 4400",
    "build-storybook": "storybook build"
  }
}

You can also remove the Storybook targets in the angular.json

If you're using Nx, update your project.json storybook targets to run the Storybook commands:

    "storybook": {
      "executor": "nx:run-commands",
      "options": {
        "cwd": "apps/my-app",
        "command": "storybook dev --port 4400"
      }
    },
    "build-storybook": {
      "executor": "nx:run-commands",
      "options": {
        "cwd": "apps/my-app",
        "command": "storybook build --output-dir ../../dist/storybook/my-app"
      }
    }

If necessary, add the /storybook-static folder to your .gitignore file.

Running Storybook

Run the storybook commands directly for running the development server.

npm run storybook

Building Storybook

Run the storybook commands for building the storybook.

npm run build-storybook

Storybook is a great way to build and iterate on your components in isolation before integrating them into your application.

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