Use Nuxt programmatically without builder - node.js

Question

I am using nuxt programmatically inside express with nuxt.render middleware like below
const { Nuxt, Builder } = require('nuxt')
const app = require('express')()
const api = require('../api')
app.use('/api', api)
let config = require('../nuxt.config.js')
config.dev = !(process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production')
// Init Nuxt.js
const nuxt = new Nuxt(config)
app.use(nuxt.render)
async function start() {
// Build only in dev mode
if (config.dev) {
const builder = new Builder(nuxt)
await builder.build()
}
// Listen the server
app.listen(port, host)
console.log('Server listening on ' + host + ':' + port)
}
start()
When I am developing the server api routes and make some changes to the server side api files and restart the server, the whole nuxt project builds everytime which takes too much time. This is inconvenient as there were no changes in the nuxt files, only changes in the api route files.
So after building once, I comment out the following lines:
if (config.dev) {
// const builder = new Builder(nuxt)
// await builder.build()
}
I then restart the server which of course does not start the nuxt builder. But then I am now not able to access nuxt on browser. The server api routes work but the nuxt page routes just show "Nuxt loading…" screen.
How can I use nuxt app in development mode without building it everytime?

Answer 1

It might be a valid use case, sometimes one doesn't want to use two servers for a very small api/ui pair. What I would suggest is also to have a detached mode which works through nuxt/proxy and you could run it whenever you are doing dev work. In detached mode your nuxt works separately and api runs also separately and nuxt imitates above setup via `nuxt/proxy. It's very easy to setup via adding smth like this in nuxt config
modules: [
['#nuxtjs/proxy', { "/api/": { target: 'http://localhost:888/api'} }]
]
In prod you could run as before.

Answer 2

You can use build.parallel, build.cache, and build.hardSource. This will dramatically speed up your build times after the initial build.
I do not recommend this for production builds though. This is how I have it in my code:
nuxt.config.js:
const isDev = process.env.NODE_ENV === "development";
module.exports = {
// ...
build: {
parallel: isDev,
cache: isDev,
hardSource: isDev
},
// ...
};
And in the package.json I set the NODE_ENV to production for the build script:
"scripts": {
"build": "NODE_ENV=production nuxt build"
}
P.S.: You might also need to set build.publicPath for the dev builds.