Create a SPA with Laravel and Nuxt

In this tutorial we'll use Laravel as an API and Nuxt as a Single Page Application. They can work together, but it's not an easy task at first. If you already tried, getting HMR to seamlessly work is a pain! For that reason I created laravel-nuxt and laravel-nuxt-js.

There are more reasons to use these packages, such as when using Laravel Passport and the CreateFreshApiToken. The middleware will create an api_token cookie on web routes that use the get http verb, and that's a problem if you're not serving your SPA from within Laravel.

Getting started

Install Laravel

Let's start with fresh new Laravel installation:

composer create-project laravel/laravel spa

Go inside the spa directory with your terminal.

Install laravel-nuxt (for PHP)

# cd spa
composer require pallares/laravel-nuxt

This package will be autodiscovered. If you're using old versions of Laravel, just add the service provider in config/app.php file:

<?php
return [
    // ...
    'providers' => [
        // ...
        Pallares\LaravelNuxt\LaravelNuxtServiceProvider::class,
    ],
];

Add a fallback route that will render the SPA page in routes/web.php file. Be sure to remove the default route that comes with the framework:

<?php
// Route::get('/', function () {
//     return view('welcome');
// });

Route::get(
    '{uri}',
    '\\'.Pallares\LaravelNuxt\Controllers\NuxtController::class
)->where('uri', '.*');

Now, your backend is ready to serve the compiled assets that Nuxt will generate for you. Every route that would return a 404 now will serve our SPA page.

Install laravel-nuxt (for JS)

It's time to install the JS package. Replace your package.json file with this:

{
    "private": true,
    "scripts": {
        "start": "laravel-nuxt dev",
        "build": "laravel-nuxt build"
    },
    "dependencies": {
        "laravel-nuxt": "^1.0.0"
    }
}

Install the dependencies:

npm install

The laravel-nuxt package will install Nuxt for you, along with Vue, vue-router, @nuxtjs/axios, etc. Let's create the nuxt.config.js file:

const laravelNuxt = require("laravel-nuxt");

module.exports = laravelNuxt({
  // Options such as mode, srcDir and generate.dir are already handled for you.
  modules: [],
  plugins: [],
});

From now on, Nuxt will look for the source files in the resources/nuxt directory.

Create a hello world route in resources/nuxt/pages/index.vue:

<template>
  <h1>Hello {{ name }}!</h1>
</template>

<script>
export default {
  data: () => {
    return { name: 'world' };
  },
};
</script>

Finally, run:

npm start

Go to http://localhost:8000. You should see this:

That's it! Laravel artisan's server and Nuxt's dev server are up and working together transparently. Try editing your home page now, it's very enjoyable to see the live reload in action.

Under the hood, Nuxt's dev server is proxying every call to the Laravel's server, including the SPA rendering. Since @nuxtjs/axios module is included (and proxied, too), you can make API calls normally.

Calling the API from the SPA

The SPA will surely need to call our API, so let's add a route to routes/api.php to retrieve the user information:

<?php
Route::get('me', function () {
    // Let's return fake information.
    return [
        'name' => 'John Doe',
    ];
});

Now, edit resources/nuxt/pages/index.vue:

<template>
  <h1>Hello {{ user.name }}!</h1>
</template>

<script>
export default {
    // https://github.com/nuxt-community/axios-module
    async asyncData({ app }) {
        const user = await app.$axios.$get('api/me');
        return { user };
    },
};
</script>

Voila! Your page should now look like this!

In order to keep the tutorial simple, we aren't using any kind of authentication here. Integrating Passport should be almost trivial here.

Deployment

If you want to deploy your application, just run npm run build. The compiled assets will be placed in the public/_nuxt directory.

You can preview your final app with the well known artisan command php artisan serve.

You may want to add the .nuxt and public/_nuxt directories to your .gitignore.

Final thoughts

This is my first tutorial. I hope everything is clear and concise! Please, don't hesitate to ask questions here or create issues in the laravel-nuxt repositories. Thanks!

Comments

[Phạm Đức Huy]

It's not working for me. When I run npm start and open localhost:8000, it shows Error occured while trying to proxy to: 127.0.0.1:8000/ . There was no other process that occupying that port. What could be the problem? ([HPM] Error occurred while trying to proxy request /favicon.ico from 127.0.0.1:8000 to 127.0.0.1:8001 (ECONNREFUSED) (nodejs.org/api/errors.html#errors_...)

[Kousar Rahman]

Hi I have build a application with laravel + nuxt js using pallares/laravel-nuxt package but after deploy this app it take too much time to load and show a preloader , how speed up this app .
this this the app url :
zanaj.com

[Jenuel Oras Ganawed]

any update on this? for 2021?

[ramirezfer772]

Hi, I'm having a problem compiling tailwind runnning npm run build, however I can see all the tailwind stuff with nuxt running npm start, I configured the nuxt.config.js file with buildModules: ['@nuxtjs/tailwindcss'], but unable to compile tailwind in the public/_nuxt, Do you have any idea how to have tailwind styles in with npm run build? Thank you, amazing work anyway.

[Anatoli]

If I add the universal mode to the nuxt.config.js file, the spa mode still remains when the application starts (npm run start).

What does it take to get the SSR to turn on?

[keetamhoang]

hello, Have you solved this problem yet?

[BELHARRADI JAMAL]

how to use mutiple nuxt projects ??

[Cristian Pallarés]

The package targets one Nuxt project per Laravel API. I suggest using Laravel Sanctum now, which handles SPA authentication for you easily (with support for any number of projects).

[lordroseman]

Hi, why I cant add vuetify in this laravel-nuxt? After I follow your instructions, I added nuxt/vuetify by running:

"npm install @nuxtjs/vuetify -D" 

then I add the buildModules in nuxt.config.js it looks like this:

const laravelNuxt = require("laravel-nuxt");

module.exports = laravelNuxt({
    // Options such as mode, srcDir and generate.dir are already handled for you.
    modules: [],
    plugins: [],
    buildModules: [
        // Simple usage
        '@nuxtjs/vuetify',
    ]
});

`

then I run: npm start and it gives me error:

`

[laravel] Laravel development server started: http://127.0.0.1:8001
npm ERR! code ELIFECYCLE
npm ERR! errno 1
npm ERR! @ start: `laravel-nuxt dev`
npm ERR! Exit status 1
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Failed at the @ start script.
npm ERR! This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above.

npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR!     C:\Users\HP\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache\_logs\2020-02-15T04_21_37_327Z-debug.log

What did I do wrong? Can you please help me? Thanks! :D

[ThisIsntMyId]

Can I still use this in 2019?

[Florence Comajes]

is it fully support on deploying to vapor ?

[Cristian Pallarés]

I think it should work out of the box, providing that you run the build script.

[Nathaniel David]

Please which directory should I create the nuxt.config.js, I'm new to nuxt.

[rdigitalg]

On the root of your app. Eg: my-laravel-app/nuxt.config.js

[Charlie Rydholm]

I've deployed an application built with laravel-nuxt. But after I've deployed it gives me alot of 404 error messages.

searching for files with random letters and numbers in it.

In the /_nuxt/ file. But my _nuxt file is no longer in the ./public folder, it's in a sibling folder to the root, named public_html. How can I fix this?

[Cristian Pallarés]

Did you change the configuration to change the public directory? The /_nuxt directory should be accessible publicly, so it should be at public/_nuxt, along with the index.php.

[Charlie Rydholm]

Yeah but I've deployed it to shared hosting so I was needed to place everything in my public folder into public_html So my folder structure does look like this now

-app
---everything except public folder
-public_html
---everything that was in the the public folder

So i need to change the path, when I try to launch my website it gives me 404 errors on the wierd file names. looking for it in myHostAddress/_nuxt/
But instead it should look for it in myHostAddress/myName/public_html/_nuxt

This happened directly after i built it and launched even if I keep the same folder structure, it seeks in myHostAddress/_nuxt/ instead of myHostAddress/myName/MyApp/public

Been trying to solve it for days now..

[Charlie Rydholm]

Do I need to build a new application, because this does not support shared hosting?

[Bilell Ghersa]

Easy and simpl, kind of tutorials i lieke

[RobertBar]

Hi, Cristian!
Do you have any idea why baseURL it is recognized only when using "npm run build" and "php artisan serve" commands? When I run "npm run start" the baseURL it is not using the provided value
axios: {
baseURL: development ? 'devsite/api' : "livesite/api"
},

[RobertBar]

Found a solution: browserbaseURL should be provided also.

axios: {
baseURL: development ? 'devsite/api' : "livesite/api",
browserBaseURL: development ? 'devsite/api' : "livesite/api"
},

[Cristian Pallarés]

Oh, great!

[RobertBar]

Great tutorial Cristian. I have already implemented a login system using JWT authentication and @nuxtjs/auth.