Hide SSR-Incapable Vue Components with vue-no-ssr

The prolific egoist is at it again with his latest super-useful, extra-tiny Vue.js utility. vue-no-ssr keeps Vue from attempting to render components on the server that don’t work there, while allowing them to keep rendering on the client.

I’ve actually run into this sort of issue more than once, and came up with a few hacks and awkward solutions around it. vue-no-ssr is a significant improvement and is incredibly easy to use, as shown below.

Installation

Install vue-no-ssr via Yarn or NPM.

# Yarn
$ yarn add vue-no-ssr

# NPM
$ npm install vue-no-ssr --save

Usage

Now, just wrap any component that doesn’t work on the server with a no-ssr component.

<template>
  <div>
    <server-component>I work fine on the server!</server-component>
    <no-ssr placeholder="You can even add a placeholder to be rendered instead!">
      <client-component>I only work on the client. :( </client-component>
    </no-ssr>
  </div>
</template>

<script>
import NoSSR from 'vue-no-ssr';

export default {
  components: {
    'no-ssr': NoSSR
  }
}
</script>

Now, the server won’t even attempt to render client-component, but it will render on the client. Easy-peasy!

The code for vue-no-ssr itself is itty-bitty (< 500B). Basically all it does it avoid rendering the child component until the mounted() hook is called. Since the mounted() hook doesn’t get called during SSR, the rendering of the child component won’t happen until it’s rendered on the client. How’s that for an elegant solution?