Custom Elements

The dist-custom-elements output target is used to generate custom elements in a more optimized way for tree shaking, and its the recommended approach when using any frontend framework integrations. For example, if a component library has 100 components, but an external project only imported one component from the directory, then only the code used by that one component would be pulled into the project. This is due to Stencil's use of ES Modules and the compiler generating friendly code for bundlers to parse and understand.

outputTargets: [
  {
    type: 'dist-custom-elements',
  },
];

Defining Exported Custom Elements

By default, the custom elements files will be written to dist/components/. This directory can be configured using the output target's dir config. The generated files will each export a component class and will already have the styles bundled. However, this build does not define the custom elements or apply any polyfills. Any dependencies of your imported component will need to be loaded as well.

Below is an example of defining a custom element:

import { HelloWorld } from 'my-library/dist/components/hello-world';

customElements.define('hello-world', HelloWorld);

The output directory will also contain an index.js file which exports all of your components and their respective defineCustomElement helper functions, looking something like this:

export { setAssetPath, setPlatformOptions } from '@stencil/core/internal/client';
export { MyComponent, defineCustomElement as defineCustomElementMyComponent } from './my-component.js';
export {
  MyOtherComponent,
  defineCustomElement as defineCustomElementMyOtherComponent
} from './my-other-component.js';

This file can be used as the root module when distributing your component library, see below for more details.

Config

autoDefineCustomElements

By default, consumers of the dist-custom-elements output target need to register each Stencil component that they want to use in the bundle manually. Setting this flag to true will define a component automatically with the CustomElementRegistry when the component's module is imported. Note that this will also automatically recursively define any child components as well.

This flag defaults to false when omitted from a Stencil configuration file.

Note: At this time, components that do not use JSX cannot be automatically defined. This is a known limitation of Stencil that users should be aware of.

externalRuntime

When true, this flag results in the following behaviors:

Minification will follow what is specified in the Stencil config.
Filenames will not be hashed.
All imports from packages under @stencil/core/* will be marked as external and therefore not included in the generated Rollup bundle.

This flag defaults to true when omitted from a Stencil configuration file.

generateTypeDeclarations

By default, type declaration files (.d.ts files) are only generated for the dist-custom-elements output target when the dist output target is also declared in a Stencil project's configuration. This behavior isn't always desirable, as not all users need the files emitted by the dist output target. To generate type declaration files for the dist-custom-elements, the experimental generateTypeDeclarations field can be set to true.

Setting this flag to true will generate type declaration files for the dist-custom-elements output target. Type declaration files will be placed in the dist/types directory in the root of a Stencil project. At this time, this output destination is not able to be configured.

This flag defaults to false when omitted from a Stencil configuration file.

Making Assets Available

For performance reasons, the generated bundle does not include local assets built within the JavaScript output, but instead it's recommended to keep static assets as external files. By keeping them external this ensures they can be requested on-demand, rather than either welding their content into the JS file, or adding many URLs for the bundler to add to the output. One method to ensure assets are available to external builds and http servers is to set the asset path using setAssetPath().

The setAssetPath() function is used to manually set the base path where static assets can be found. For the lazy-loaded output target the asset path is automatically set and assets copied to the correct build directory. However, for custom elements builds, the setAssetPath(path) should be used to customize the asset path depending on where they are found on the http server.

If the component's script is a type="module", it's recommended to use import.meta.url, such as setAssetPath(import.meta.url). Other options include setAssetPath(document.currentScript.src), or using a bundler's replace plugin to dynamically set the path at build time, such as setAssetPath(process.env.ASSET_PATH).

import { setAssetPath } from 'my-library/dist/components';

setAssetPath(document.currentScript.src);

Make sure to copy the assets over to a public directory in your app. This configuration depends on how your script is bundled, or lack of bundling, and where your assets can be loaded from. How the files are copied to the production build directory depends on the bundler or tooling. The configs below provide examples of how to do this automatically with popular bundlers.

Distributing Custom Elements

Your component library can be distributed on NPM, just like @ionic/core. From there, consumers of your library can decide how to import your library into their project. For the dist-custom-elements output target, the default import location would be my-library/dist/components, but this can get further configured within the package.json file.

To make the custom elements index the entry module for a package, set the module property like so in your package.json:

{
  "module": "dist/components/index.js",
  "dependencies": {
    "@stencil/core": "latest"
  },
  ...
}

Be sure to set @stencil/core as a dependency of the package as well.

Note: If you are distributing the output of both the dist and dist-custom-elements targets, then it's up to you to choose which one of them should be available in the module entry.

Consumers of your library can then either import components from their individual files, like so:

import { MyComponent } from 'best-web-components/dist/components/my-component';

Or they can import directly from the index module (dist/components/index.js), like so:

import { MyComponent } from 'best-web-components';

Now you can publish your library to Node Package Manager (NPM). For more information about setting up the package.json file, and publishing, see: Publishing Component Library To NPM.

Usage in Typescript

If you plan to support consuming your component library in Typescript you'll need to set generateTypeDeclarations: true on the your output target in stencil.config.ts, like so:

outputTargets: [
  {
    type: 'dist-custom-elements',
    generateTypeDeclarations: true,
  },
];

Then you can set the types property in package.json so that consumers of your package can find the type definitions, like so:

{
  "module": "dist/components/index.js",
  "types": "dist/components/index.d.ts",
  "dependencies": {
    "@stencil/core": "latest"
  },
  ...
}

Example Bundler Configs

Instructions for consuming the custom elements bundle vary depending on the bundler you're using. These examples will help your users consume your components with webpack and Rollup.

The following examples assume your component library is published to NPM as my-library. You should change this to the name you actually publish your library with.

Users will need to install your library before importing them.

npm install my-library

webpack.config.js

A webpack config will look something like the one below. Note how assets are copied from the library's node_module folder to dist/assets via the CopyPlugin utility. This is important if your library includes local assets.

const path = require('path');
const CopyPlugin = require('copy-webpack-plugin');

module.exports = {
  entry: './src/index.js',
  output: {
    filename: 'main.js',
    path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist'),
  },
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.css$/i,
        use: ['style-loader', 'css-loader'],
      },
    ],
  },
  plugins: [
    new CopyPlugin({
      patterns: [
        {
          from: path.resolve(__dirname, 'node_modules/my-library/dist/my-library/assets'),
          to: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist/assets'),
        },
      ],
    }),
  ],
};

rollup.config.js

A Rollup config will look something like the one below. Note how assets are copied from the library's node_module folder to dist/assets via the rollup-copy-plugin utility. This is important if your library includes local assets.

import path from 'path';
import commonjs from '@rollup/plugin-commonjs';
import copy from 'rollup-plugin-copy';
import postcss from 'rollup-plugin-postcss';
import resolve from '@rollup/plugin-node-resolve';

export default {
  input: 'src/index.js',
  output: [{ dir: path.resolve('dist/'), format: 'es' }],
  plugins: [
    resolve(),
    commonjs(),
    postcss({
      extensions: ['.css'],
    }),
    copy({
      targets: [
        {
          src: path.resolve(__dirname, 'node_modules/my-library/dist/my-library/assets'),
          dest: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist'),
        },
      ],
    }),
  ],
};

How is this different from the "dist" and the "dist-custom-element-bundle" output targets?

The dist-custom-elements builds each component as a stand-alone class that extends HTMLElement. The output is a standardized custom element with the styles already attached and without any of Stencil's lazy-loading. This may be preferred for projects that are already handling bundling, lazy-loading and defining the custom elements themselves.

The dist-custom-elements-bundle output target is nearly the same as dist-custom-elements, and has been deprecated in Stencil v2.12.0 in favor of dist-custom-elements for its improved tree-shaking features. Stencil's React, Vue, and Angular output targets use the dist-custom-elements for this reason.

The dist output target, on the other hand, is more for projects that want to allow components to lazy-load themselves, without having to setup bundling configurations to do so.

Luckily, all builds can be generated at the same time, using the same source code, and shipped in the same distribution. It would be up to the consumer of your component library to decide which build to use.

Browser Support

If the library is to be used on IE11 we recommend using the dist output target instead since it will only load the required polyfills on-demand. The dist-custom-elements is only recommended for modern browsers that already support Custom Elements, Shadow DOM, and CSS Variables (basically not IE11 or Edge 12-18). If this build is going to be used within legacy browsers then the project consuming these components will have to provide its own polyfills, and correctly downlevel the output to ES5.

Good news is that these are already widely supported for modern web development: