Nuxt on AWS with SST

Create and deploy a Nuxt app to AWS with SST.

There are two ways to deploy a Nuxt app to AWS with SST.

Serverless
Containers

We’ll use both to build a couple of simple apps below.

Serverless

We are going to create a Nuxt app, add an S3 Bucket for file uploads, and deploy it using the Nuxt component.

Before you get started, make sure to configure your AWS credentials.

1. Create a project

Let’s start by creating our project.

npx nuxi@latest init aws-nuxt
cd aws-nuxt

We are picking the npm as the package manager.

Init SST

Now let’s initialize SST in our app.

npx sst@latest init
npm install

Select the defaults and pick AWS. This’ll create a sst.config.ts file in your project root.

It’ll also ask you to update your nuxt.config.ts with something like this.

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  compatibilityDate: '2024-04-03',
  nitro: {
    preset: 'aws-lambda'
  },
  devtools: { enabled: true }
})

Start dev mode

Run the following to start dev mode. This’ll start SST and your Nuxt app.

npx sst dev

Once complete, click on MyWeb in the sidebar and open your Nuxt app in your browser.

2. Add an S3 Bucket

Let’s allow public access to our S3 Bucket for file uploads. Update your sst.config.ts.

const bucket = new sst.aws.Bucket("MyBucket", {
  access: "public"
});

Add this above the Nuxt component.

Link the bucket

Now, link the bucket to our Nuxt app.

new sst.aws.Nuxt("MyWeb", {
  link: [bucket],
});

3. Generate a pre-signed URL

When our app loads, we’ll call an API that’ll generate a pre-signed URL for the file upload. Create a new server/api/presigned.ts with the following.

export default defineEventHandler(async () => {
  const command = new PutObjectCommand({
    Key: crypto.randomUUID(),
    Bucket: Resource.MyBucket.name,
  });

  return await getSignedUrl(new S3Client({}), command);
})

Add the relevant imports.

import { Resource } from "sst";
import { getSignedUrl } from "@aws-sdk/s3-request-presigner";
import { S3Client, PutObjectCommand } from "@aws-sdk/client-s3";

And install the npm packages.

npm install @aws-sdk/client-s3 @aws-sdk/s3-request-presigner

4. Create an upload form

Add a form to upload files to the presigned URL. Replace our app.vue with:

<script setup>
  const file = ref(null);
  const { data } = await useFetch('/api/presigned');

  async function onSubmit() {
    const upload = file.value.files[0];
    const image = await fetch(data.value, {
      body: upload,
      method: "PUT",
      headers: {
        "Content-Type": upload.type,
        "Content-Disposition": `attachment; filename="${upload.name}"`,
      },
    });

    window.location.href = image.url.split("?")[0];
  }
</script>
<template>
  <form novalidate @submit.prevent="onSubmit">
    <input type="file" ref="file" accept="image/png, image/jpeg" />
    <button type="submit">Upload</button>
  </form>
</template>

Head over to the local app in your browser, http://localhost:3000 and try uploading an image. You should see it upload and then download the image.

5. Deploy your app

Now let’s deploy your app to AWS.

npx sst deploy --stage production

You can use any stage name here but it’s good to create a new stage for production.

Congrats! Your site should now be live!

SST Nuxt app

Containers

We are going to build a hit counter Nuxt app with Redis. We’ll deploy it to AWS in a container using the Cluster component.

Before you get started, make sure to configure your AWS credentials.

1. Create a project

Let’s start by creating our project.

npx nuxi@latest init aws-nuxt-container
cd aws-nuxt-container

We are picking the npm as the package manager.

Init SST

Now let’s initialize SST in our app.

npx sst@latest init
npm install

Select the defaults and pick AWS. This’ll create a sst.config.ts file in your project root.

It’ll also ask you to update your nuxt.config.ts. But instead we’ll use the default Node preset.

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  compatibilityDate: '2024-11-01',
  devtools: { enabled: true }
})

2. Add a Cluster

To deploy our Nuxt app in a container, we’ll use AWS Fargate with Amazon ECS. Replace the run function in your sst.config.ts.

async run() {
  const vpc = new sst.aws.Vpc("MyVpc", { bastion: true });
  const cluster = new sst.aws.Cluster("MyCluster", { vpc });

  cluster.addService("MyService", {
    loadBalancer: {
      ports: [{ listen: "80/http", forward: "3000/http" }],
    },
    dev: {
      command: "npm run dev",
    },
  });
}

This creates a VPC with a bastion host, an ECS Cluster, and adds a Fargate service to it.

The dev.command tells SST to instead run our Nuxt app locally in dev mode.

3. Add Redis

Let’s add an Amazon ElastiCache Redis cluster. Add this below the Vpc component in your sst.config.ts.

const redis = new sst.aws.Redis("MyRedis", { vpc });

This shares the same VPC as our ECS cluster.

Link Redis

Now, link the Redis cluster to the container.

cluster.addService("MyService", {
  // ...
  link: [redis],
});

This will allow us to reference the Redis cluster in our Nuxt app.

Install a tunnel

Since our Redis cluster is in a VPC, we’ll need a tunnel to connect to it from our local machine.

sudo npx sst tunnel install

This needs sudo to create a network interface on your machine. You’ll only need to do this once on your machine.

Start dev mode

Start your app in dev mode.

npx sst dev

This will deploy your app, start a tunnel in the Tunnel tab, and run your Nuxt app locally in the MyServiceDev tab.

4. Connect to Redis

We want the / route to increment a counter in our Redis cluster. Let’s start by installing the npm package we’ll use.

npm install ioredis

We’ll call an API that’ll increment the counter when the app loads. Create a new server/api/counter.ts with the following.

import { Resource } from "sst";
import { Cluster } from "ioredis";

const redis = new Cluster(
  [{ host: Resource.MyRedis.host, port: Resource.MyRedis.port }],
  {
    dnsLookup: (address, callback) => callback(null, address),
    redisOptions: {
      tls: {},
      username: Resource.MyRedis.username,
      password: Resource.MyRedis.password,
    },
  }
);

export default defineEventHandler(async () => {
  return await redis.incr("counter");
})

Let’s update our component to show the counter. Replace our app.vue with:

<script setup lang="ts">
const { data: counter } = await useFetch("/api/counter")
</script>

<template>
  <p>Hit counter: {{ counter }}</p>
</template>

Test your app

Let’s head over to http://localhost:3000 in your browser and it’ll show the current hit counter.

You should see it increment every time you refresh the page.

5. Deploy your app

To deploy our app we’ll add a Dockerfile.

View Dockerfile

FROM node:lts AS base

WORKDIR /src

# Build
FROM base as build

COPY --link package.json package-lock.json ./
RUN npm install

COPY --link . .

RUN npm run build

# Run
FROM base

ENV PORT=3000
ENV NODE_ENV=production

COPY --from=build /src/.output /src/.output

CMD [ "node", ".output/server/index.mjs" ]

Let’s also add a .dockerignore file in the root.

node_modules

Now to build our Docker image and deploy we run:

npx sst deploy --stage production

You can use any stage name here but it’s good to create a new stage for production.

Congrats! Your app should now be live!

SST Nuxt container app

Connect the console

As a next step, you can setup the SST Console to git push to deploy your app and monitor it for any issues.

SST Console Autodeploy

You can create a free account and connect it to your AWS account.