Migrating from Sapper

SvelteKit is the successor to Sapper and shares many elements of its design.

If you have an existing Sapper app that you plan to migrate to SvelteKit, there are a number of changes you will need to make. You may find it helpful to view some examples while migrating.

package.jsonpermalink

type: "module"permalink

Add "type": "module" to your package.json. You can do this step separately from the rest as part of an incremental migration if you are using Sapper 0.29.3 or newer.

dependenciespermalink

Remove polka or express, if you're using one of those, and any middleware such as sirv or compression.

devDependenciespermalink

Remove sapper from your devDependencies and replace it with @sveltejs/kit and whichever adapter you plan to use (see next section).

scriptspermalink

Any scripts that reference sapper should be updated:

sapper build should become vite build using the Node adapter
sapper export should become vite build using the static adapter
sapper dev should become vite dev
node __sapper__/build should become node build

Project filespermalink

The bulk of your app, in src/routes, can be left where it is, but several project files will need to be moved or updated.

Configurationpermalink

Your webpack.config.js or rollup.config.js should be replaced with a svelte.config.js, as documented here. Svelte preprocessor options should be moved to config.preprocess.

You will need to add an adapter. sapper build is roughly equivalent to adapter-node while sapper export is roughly equivalent to adapter-static, though you might prefer to use an adapter designed for the platform you're deploying to.

If you were using plugins for filetypes that are not automatically handled by Vite, you will need to find Vite equivalents and add them to the Vite config.

src/client.jspermalink

This file has no equivalent in SvelteKit. Any custom logic (beyond sapper.start(...)) should be expressed in your __layout.svelte file, inside an onMount callback.

src/server.jspermalink

When using adapter-node the equivalent is a custom server. Otherwise, this file has no direct equivalent, since SvelteKit apps can run in serverless environments. You can, however, use the hooks module to implement session logic.

src/service-worker.jspermalink

Most imports from @sapper/service-worker have equivalents in $service-worker:

files is unchanged
routes has been removed
shell is now build
timestamp is now version

src/template.htmlpermalink

The src/template.html file should be renamed src/app.html.

Remove %sapper.base%, %sapper.scripts% and %sapper.styles%. Replace %sapper.head% with %sveltekit.head% and %sapper.html% with %sveltekit.body%. The <div id="sapper"> is no longer necessary.

src/node_modulespermalink

A common pattern in Sapper apps is to put your internal library in a directory inside src/node_modules. This doesn't work with Vite, so we use src/lib instead.

Pages and layoutspermalink

Renamed filespermalink

Routes now are made up of the folder name exclusively to remove ambiguity, the folder names leading up to a +page.svelte correspond to the route. See the routing docs for an overview. The following shows a old/new comparison:

Old	New
routes/about/index.svelte	routes/about/+page.svelte
routes/about.svelte	routes/about/+page.svelte

Your custom error page component should be renamed from _error.svelte to +error.svelte. Any _layout.svelte files should likewise be renamed +layout.svelte. The double underscore prefix is reserved for SvelteKit; your own private modules are still denoted with a single _ prefix (configurable via routes config).

Importspermalink

The goto, prefetch and prefetchRoutes imports from @sapper/app should be replaced with identical imports from $app/navigation.

The stores import from @sapper/app should be replaced — see the Stores section below.

Any files you previously imported from directories in src/node_modules will need to be replaced with $lib imports.

Preloadpermalink

As before, pages and layouts can export a function that allows data to be loaded before rendering takes place.

This function has been renamed from preload to load, it now lives in a +page.js (or +layout.js) next to its +page.svelte (or +layout.svelte), and its API has changed. Instead of two arguments — page and session — there is a single argument that includes both, along with fetch (which replaces this.fetch) and a new stuff object.

There is no more this object, and consequently no this.fetch, this.error or this.redirect. Instead of returning props directly, load now returns an object that contains props, alongside various other things.

Lastly, if your page has a load method, make sure to return something otherwise you will get Not found.

Storespermalink

In Sapper, you would get references to provided stores like so:

ts
import { stores } from '@sapper/app';
const { preloading, page, session } = stores();

The page and session stores still exist; preloading has been replaced with a navigating store that contains from and to properties. page now has url and params properties, but no path or query.

You access them differently in SvelteKit. stores is now getStores, but in most cases it is unnecessary since you can import navigating, page and session directly from $app/stores.

Routingpermalink

Regex routes are no longer supported. Instead, use advanced route matching.

Segmentspermalink

Previously, layout components received a segment prop indicating the child segment. This has been removed; you should use the more flexible $page.url.pathname value to derive the segment you're interested in.

URLspermalink

In Sapper, all relative URLs were resolved against the base URL — usually /, unless the basepath option was used — rather than against the current page.

This caused problems and is no longer the case in SvelteKit. Instead, relative URLs are resolved against the current page (or the destination page, for fetch URLs in load functions) instead. In most cases, it's easier to use root-relative (i.e. starts with /) URLs, since their meaning is not context-dependent.

<a> attributespermalink

sapper:prefetch is now sveltekit:prefetch
sapper:noscroll is now sveltekit:noscroll

Endpointspermalink

In Sapper, 'server routes' — now referred to as endpoints — received the req and res objects exposed by Node's http module (or the augmented versions provided by frameworks like Polka and Express).

SvelteKit is designed to be agnostic as to where the app is running — it could be running on a Node server, but could equally be running on a serverless platform or in a Cloudflare Worker. For that reason, you no longer interact directly with req and res. Your endpoints will need to be updated to match the new signature.

To support this environment-agnostic behavior, fetch is now available in the global context, so you don't need to import node-fetch, cross-fetch, or similar server-side fetch implementations in order to use it.

Integrationspermalink

See the FAQ for detailed information about integrations.

HTML minifierpermalink

Sapper includes html-minifier by default. SvelteKit does not include this, but it can be added as a hook:

ts
import { minify } from 'html-minifier';
import { prerendering } from '$app/env';
 
const minification_options = {
  collapseBooleanAttributes: true,
  collapseWhitespace: true,
  conservativeCollapse: true,
  decodeEntities: true,
  html5: true,
  ignoreCustomComments: [/^#/],
  minifyCSS: true,
  minifyJS: false,
  removeAttributeQuotes: true,
  removeComments: true,
  removeOptionalTags: true,
  removeRedundantAttributes: true,
  removeScriptTypeAttributes: true,
  removeStyleLinkTypeAttributes: true,
  sortAttributes: true,
  sortClassName: true
};
 
/** @type {import('@sveltejs/kit').Handle} */
export async function handle({ event, resolve }) {
  const response = await resolve(event);
 
  if (prerendering && response.headers.get('content-type') === 'text/html') {
    return new Response(minify(await response.text(), minification_options), {
      status: response.status,
      headers: response.headers
    });
  }
 
  return response;
}

Note that prerendering is false when using vite preview to test the production build of the site, so to verify the results of minifying, you'll need to inspect the built HTML files directly.

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