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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.

This 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

Follow the provided prompts, and commit your changes.

Installing the Storybook and Vite packages​

Install the Vite Plugin for Angular and the Vite Builder for Storybook. Depending on your preferred package manager, run one of the following commands:

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

Configuring Storybook to use the Vite Builder​

Add the zone.js import to the top of your .storybook/preview.ts file.

import 'zone.js';
import { applicationConfig, type Preview } from '@storybook/angular';
import { provideNoopAnimations } from '@angular/platform-browser/animations';

const preview: Preview = {
  decorators: [
    applicationConfig({
      providers: [provideNoopAnimations()],
    }),
  ],
  parameters: {
    controls: {
      matchers: {
        color: /(background|color)$/i,
        date: /Date$/i,
      },
    },
  },
};

export default preview;

Next, 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' })],
      define: {
        STORYBOOK_ANGULAR_OPTIONS: JSON.stringify({
          experimentalZoneless: false,
        }),
      },
    });
  },
};

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"
      }
    }

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

Using shared CSS paths​

To load shared CSS paths, configure them using loadPaths css option in the vite config.

import path from 'node:path';

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, {
    css: {
      preprocessorOptions: {
        scss: {
          loadPaths: `${path.resolve(__dirname, '../src/lib/styles')}`
        }
      }
    }
  });
},

Using TypeScript Config Path Aliases​

If you are using paths in your tsconfig.json, support for those aliases can be added to the vite.config.ts.

With Angular CLI​

First, install the vite-tsconfig-paths package.

npm install vite-tsconfig-paths --save-dev

Next, add the plugin to the plugins array in the vite.config.ts with the root set as the relative path to the root of the project.

import viteTsConfigPaths from 'vite-tsconfig-paths';

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, {
    plugins: [
      angular(),
      viteTsConfigPaths()
    ],
  });
}

With Nx​

For Nx workspaces, import and use the nxViteTsPaths plugin from the @nx/vite package.

import { nxViteTsPaths } from '@nx/vite/plugins/nx-tsconfig-paths.plugin';

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, {
    plugins: [
      angular(),
      nxViteTsPaths()
    ],
  });
}