# Writing a VuePress theme
To write a theme, create a .vuepress/theme
directory in your docs root, and then create a Layout.vue
file:
.
└─ .vuepress
└─ `theme`
└─ Layout.vue
From there it's the same as developing a normal Vue application. It is entirely up to you how to organize your theme.
# Content Outlet
The compiled content of the current .md
file being rendered will be available as a special <Content/>
global component. You will need to render it somewhere in your layout in order to display the content of the page. The simplest theme can be just a single Layout.vue
component with the following content:
<template>
<div class="theme-container">
<Content/>
</div>
</template>
Also see:
# Directory Structure
Just one Layout.vue
might not be enough, and you might also want to define more layout components in the theme for using on different pages. You may also want to customize the palette, and even apply some plugins.
So it's time to reorganize your theme, an agreed theme directory structure is as follows:
theme
├── `global-components`
│ └── xxx.vue
├── `components`
│ └── xxx.vue
├── `layouts`
│ ├── Layout.vue _(**Mandatory**)_
│ └── 404.vue
├── `styles`
│ ├── index.styl
│ └── palette.styl
├── `templates`
│ ├── dev.html
│ └── ssr.html
├── `index.js`
├── `enhanceApp.js`
└── package.json
theme/global-components
: Components under this directory will be automatically registered as global components. For details, please refer to @vuepress/plugin-register-components.theme/components
: Your components.theme/layouts
: Layout components of the theme, whereLayout.vue
is required.theme/styles
: Global style and palette.theme/templates
: Modify default template.theme/index.js
: Entry file of theme configuration.theme/enhanceApp.js
: Theme level enhancements.
::: warning Note
When you publish your theme as an NPM package, if you don't have any theme configuration, that means you don't have theme/index.js
, you'll need to set the "main"
field to layouts/Layout.vue
in package.json
, only in this way VuePress can correctly resolve the theme.
{
...
"main": "layouts/Layout.vue",
...
}
:::
# Layout Component
Suppose your theme layouts folder is as follows:
::: vue
theme
└── layouts
├── Layout.vue
├── AnotherLayout.vue
└── 404.vue
:::
Then, all the pages will use Layout.vue
as layout component by default, while the routes not matching will use 404.vue
.
If you want to switch the layout of some pages to AnotherLayout.vue
, you just need to update the frontmatter of this page:
---
layout: AnotherLayout
---
::: tip Each layout component may render distinct pages. If you want to apply some global UI (e.g. global header), consider using globalLayout。 :::
# Apply plugins
You can apply some plugins to the theme via theme/index.js
.
module.exports = {
plugins: [
['@vuepress/pwa', {
serviceWorker: true,
updatePopup: true
}]
]
}
# Site and Page Metadata
The Layout
component will be invoked once for every .md
file in docs
, and the metadata for the entire site and that specific page will be exposed respectively as this.$site
and this.$page
properties which are injected into every component in the app.
This is the value of $site
of this very website:
{
"title": "VuePress",
"description": "Vue-powered Static Site Generator",
"base": "/",
"pages": [
{
"lastUpdated": 1524027677000,
"path": "/",
"title": "VuePress",
"frontmatter": {}
},
...
]
}
title
, description
and base
are copied from respective fields in .vuepress/config.js
. pages
contains an array of metadata objects for each page, including its path, page title (explicitly specified in YAML front matter or inferred from the first header on the page), and any YAML front matter data in that file.
This is the $page
object for this page you are looking at:
{
"lastUpdated": 1524847549000,
"path": "/guide/custom-themes.html",
"title": "Custom Themes",
"headers": [/* ... */],
"frontmatter": {}
}
If the user provided themeConfig
in .vuepress/config.js
, it will also be available as $site.themeConfig
. You can use this to allow users to customize behavior of your theme - for example, specifying categories and page order. You can then use these data together with $site.pages
to dynamically construct navigation links.
Finally, don't forget that this.$route
and this.$router
are also available as part of Vue Router's API.
::: tip
lastUpdated
is the UNIX timestamp of this file's last git commit, for more details, refer to Last Updated.
:::
# Content Excerpt
If a markdown file contains a <!-- more -->
comment, any content above the comment will be extracted and exposed as $page.excerpt
. If you are building custom theme for blogging, this data can be used to render a post list with excerpts.
# App Level Enhancements
Themes can enhance the Vue app that VuePress uses by exposing an enhanceApp.js
file at the root of the theme. The file should export default
a hook function which will receive an object containing some app-level values. You can use this hook to install additional Vue plugins, register global components, or add additional router hooks:
export default ({
Vue, // the version of Vue being used in the VuePress app
options, // the options for the root Vue instance
router, // the router instance for the app
siteData // site metadata
}) => {
// ...apply enhancements to the app
}