Build a SvelteKit Markdown Blog

Published Apr 28, 2023

Table of Contents

Project Setup

You’re going to make a blazingly fast and extendable SvelteKit Markdown blog you can be proud of and deploy it to Vercel at no cost.

You can find the finished project on GitHub.

🔥 If you want to learn SvelteKit you can watch The Complete SvelteKit Course For Building Modern Web Apps on YouTube.

Start by creating a new SvelteKit project.

terminal
npm create svelte@latest

I’m using TypeScript but types are optional and can be ignored, so use JavaScript if you prefer it. Use the spacebar to select ESLint to find problems in the code and Prettier to format the code.

terminal
┌  Welcome to SvelteKit!
│
◆ Where should we create your project?
│  sveltekit-blog
│
◇  Which Svelte app template?
│  Skeleton project
│
◇  Add type checking with TypeScript?
│  Yes, using TypeScript syntax
│
◆  Select additional options (use arrow keys/space bar)
│  ◼ Add ESLint for code linting
│  ◼ Add Prettier for code formatting
│  ◻ Add Playwright for browser testing
│  ◻ Add Vitest for unit testing
└

Install the dependencies and run the development server at http://localhost:5173/.

terminal
# install dependencies
npm i

# run the development server
npm run dev

Layout And Styles

For styling I’m using Open Props which provides design tokens as CSS variables — it’s like Tailwind CSS but instead of utility classes you get CSS variables.

I also want beautiful and consistent icons and Lucide is my favorite choice.

For the fonts I’m going to use Manrope as the sans serif font for the entire site and JetBrains Mono as the monospace font for code blocks.

terminal
npm i open-props lucide-svelte @fontsource/manrope @fontsource/jetbrains-mono

Update the favicon inside app.html so everyone knows your site is blazingly fast.

src/app.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
	<head>
		<meta charset="utf-8" />
		<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
		<link rel="icon" href="https://fav.farm/🔥" />
		%sveltekit.head%
	</head>
	<body data-sveltekit-preload-data="hover">
		<div style="display: contents">%sveltekit.body%</div>
	</body>
</html>

I’m going to add a config file for the site which is going to make it easy to update it in the future since everything is in one place.

src/lib/config.ts
import { dev } from '$app/environment'

export const title = 'Shakespeare'
export const description = 'SvelteKit blog for poets'
export const url = dev ? 'http://localhost:5173/' : 'https://joyofcode.xyz/'

🐿️ If SvelteKit doesn’t detect the $lib alias after you added it restart the development server.

Add a root layout inside src/routes/+layout.svelte which is going to include the header, footer and styles for the site.

src/routes/+layout.svelte
<script lang="ts">
	import Footer from './footer.svelte'
	import Header from './header.svelte'

	import 'open-props/style'
	import 'open-props/normalize'
	import 'open-props/buttons'

	import '../app.css'
</script>

<div class="layout">
  <!-- Header -->
	<Header />

	<main>
		<!-- Black hole for other content -->
		<slot />
	</main>

  <!-- Footer -->
	<Footer />
</div>

<style>
	.layout {
		height: 100%;
		max-inline-size: 1440px;
		display: grid;
		grid-template-rows: auto 1fr auto;
		margin-inline: auto;
		padding-inline: var(--size-7);
	}

	main {
		padding-block: var(--size-9);
	}

	@media (min-width: 1440px) {
		.layout {
			padding-inline: 0;
		}
	}
</style>
src/routes/header.svelte
<script lang="ts">
	import * as config from '$lib/config'
</script>

<nav>
  <!-- Title -->
	<a href="/" class="title">
		<b>{config.title}</b>
	</a>

  <!-- Navigation -->
	<ul class="links">
		<li>
			<a href="/about">About</a>
		</li>
		<li>
			<a href="/contact">Contact</a>
		</li>
		<li>
			<a href="/rss.xml" target="_blank">RSS</a>
		</li>
	</ul>

  <!-- Theme -->
  <button>Toggle</button>
</nav>

<style>
	nav {
		padding-block: var(--size-7);
	}

	.links {
		margin-block: var(--size-7);
	}

	a {
		color: inherit;
		text-decoration: none;
	}

	@media (min-width: 768px) {
		nav {
			display: flex;
			justify-content: space-between;
		}

		.links {
			display: flex;
			gap: var(--size-7);
			margin-block: 0;
		}
	}
</style>
src/routes/footer.svelte
<script lang="ts">
	import * as config from '$lib/config'
</script>

<!-- Footer -->
<footer>
	<p>{config.title} &copy {new Date().getFullYear()}</p>
</footer>

<style>
	footer {
		padding-block: var(--size-7);
		border-top: 1px solid var(--border);
	}

	p {
		color: var(--text-2);
	}
</style>
src/app.css
@import '@fontsource/manrope';
@import '@fontsource/jetbrains-mono';

html {
	/* font */
	--font-sans: 'Manrope', sans-serif;
	--font-mono: 'JetBrains Mono', monospace;

	/* dark */
	--brand-dark: var(--orange-3);
	--text-1-dark: var(--gray-3);
	--text-2-dark: var(--gray-5);
	--surface-1-dark: var(--gray-12);
	--surface-2-dark: var(--gray-11);
	--surface-3-dark: var(--gray-10);
	--surface-4-dark: var(--gray-9);
	--background-dark: var(--gradient-8);
	--border-dark: var(--gray-9);

	/* light */
	--brand-light: var(--orange-10);
	--text-1-light: var(--gray-8);
	--text-2-light: var(--gray-7);
	--surface-1-light: var(--gray-0);
	--surface-2-light: var(--gray-1);
	--surface-3-light: var(--gray-2);
	--surface-4-light: var(--gray-3);
	--background-light: none;
	--border-light: var(--gray-4);
}

:root {
	color-scheme: dark;

	--brand: var(--brand-dark);
	--text-1: var(--text-1-dark);
	--text-2: var(--text-2-dark);
	--surface-1: var(--surface-1-dark);
	--surface-2: var(--surface-2-dark);
	--surface-3: var(--surface-3-dark);
	--surface-4: var(--surface-4-dark);
	--background: var(--background-dark);
	--border: var(--border-dark);
}

@media (prefers-color-scheme: light) {
	:root {
		color-scheme: light;

		--brand: var(--brand-light);
		--text-1: var(--text-1-light);
		--text-2: var(--text-2-light);
		--surface-1: var(--surface-1-light);
		--surface-2: var(--surface-2-light);
		--surface-3: var(--surface-3-light);
		--surface-4: var(--surface-4-light);
		--background: var(--background-light);
		--border: var(--border-light);
	}
}

[color-scheme='dark'] {
	color-scheme: dark;

	--brand: var(--brand-dark);
	--text-1: var(--text-1-dark);
	--text-2: var(--text-2-dark);
	--surface-1: var(--surface-1-dark);
	--surface-2: var(--surface-2-dark);
	--surface-3: var(--surface-3-dark);
	--surface-4: var(--surface-4-dark);
	--background: var(--background-dark);
	--border: var(--border-dark);
}

[color-scheme='light'] {
	color-scheme: light;

	--brand: var(--brand-light);
	--text-1: var(--text-1-light);
	--text-2: var(--text-2-light);
	--surface-1: var(--surface-1-light);
	--surface-2: var(--surface-2-light);
	--surface-3: var(--surface-3-light);
	--surface-4: var(--surface-4-light);
	--background: var(--background-light);
	--border: var(--border-light);
}

html,
body {
	height: 100%;
}

html {
	color: var(--text-1);
	accent-color: var(--link);
	background-image: var(--background);
	background-attachment: fixed;
}

img {
	border-radius: var(--radius-3);
}

ul,
ol {
	list-style: none;
	padding: 0;
}

li {
	padding-inline-start: 0;
}

.surface-1 {
	background-color: var(--surface-1);
	color: var(--text-2);
}

.surface-2 {
	background-color: var(--surface-2);
	color: var(--text-2);
}

.surface-3 {
	background-color: var(--surface-3);
	color: var(--text-1);
}

.surface-4 {
	background-color: var(--surface-4);
	color: var(--text-1);
}

Start of the SvelteKit blog

💪 As an exercise try adding the /about and /contact routes yourself since they’re mostly used as placeholders.

This sets us up nicely for the rest of the post and I’m going to show you how simple it’s going to be to implement a theme switcher because we already set everything up with CSS variables.

Right now even if you don’t have a theme toggle it’s going to respect the user preference because of the prefers-color-scheme media query.

Setting Up Mdsvex

mdsvex is like MDX for React but it’s a preprocessor for Svelte which lets you have interactive Svelte components inside Markdown and has extra options and extensions for using Markdown plugins.

To get started install mdsvex as a development dependency.

terminal
npm i -D mdsvex

Add mdsvex as a preprocessor inside svelte.config.js.

svelte.config.js
import adapter from '@sveltejs/adapter-auto'
import { vitePreprocess } from '@sveltejs/vite-plugin-svelte'

import { mdsvex } from 'mdsvex'

/** @type {import('mdsvex').MdsvexOptions} */
const mdsvexOptions = {
	extensions: ['.md'],
}

/** @type {import('@sveltejs/kit').Config} */
const config = {
	extensions: ['.svelte', '.md'],
	preprocess: [vitePreprocess(), mdsvex(mdsvexOptions)],
	kit: {
		adapter: adapter()
	}
}

export default config

Svelte by default handles .svelte files but adding .md to extensions inside config lets you treat +page.md as a page alongside +page.svelte.

Svelte is able to show +page.md as a page but you need mdsvex to preprocess Markdown.

You have to specify the extension inside the extensions array for mdsvexOptions which you name name whatever you want like .md, .svx or .banana.

Instead of using +page.md files you can import a Markdown post as a module and render it as a regular Svelte component with svelte:component which is what I’m going to do later.

I’m going to add some posts in /src/posts.

src/posts/first-post.md
---
title: First post
description: First post.
date: '2023-4-14'
categories:
  - sveltekit
  - svelte
published: true
---

## Markdown

Hey friends! 👋

```ts
function greet(name: string) {
	console.log(`Hey ${name}! 👋`)
}
```
src/posts/second-post.md
---
title: Second
description: Second post.
date: '2023-4-16'
categories:
  - sveltekit
  - svelte
published: true
---

## Svelte

Media inside the **static** folder is served from `/`.

![Svelte](favicon.png)

Posts API Endpoint

You could write the logic to get the posts data for each page in their respective +page.ts or +page.server.ts file but you would end up duplicating the logic.

I’m going to create a routes/api/posts/+server.ts endpoint instead where I’m going to write the logic once I can use anywhere in the app.

src/routes/api/posts/+server.ts
import { json } from '@sveltejs/kit'
import type { Post } from '$lib/types'

async function getPosts() {
	let posts: Post[] = []

	const paths = import.meta.glob('/src/posts/*.md', { eager: true })

	for (const path in paths) {
		const file = paths[path]
		const slug = path.split('/').at(-1)?.replace('.md', '')

		if (file && typeof file === 'object' && 'metadata' in file && slug) {
			const metadata = file.metadata as Omit<Post, 'slug'>
			const post = { ...metadata, slug } satisfies Post
			post.published && posts.push(post)
		}
	}

	posts = posts.sort((first, second) =>
    new Date(second.date).getTime() - new Date(first.date).getTime()
	)

	return posts
}

export async function GET() {
	const posts = await getPosts()
	return json(posts)
}
  • import.meta.glob is a useful Vite feature to get all the posts using a glob (eager reads the contents of the file avoiding await paths[path]())
  • I loop over the paths and get the slug post.md but replace .md since we only want the slug
  • I’m checking if file has a metadata property inside of it and if the slug exists to be safe and then I’m going to get the metadata or frontmatter from the post
  • I’m creating a post that includes metadata and the slug
  • I only want to add the post if published is set to true
  • sort posts by date and return them

If you’re using TypeScript here are the types.

src/lib/types.ts
export type Categories = 'sveltekit' | 'svelte'

export type Post = {
	title: string
	slug: string
	description: string
	date: string
	categories: Categories[]
	published: boolean
}

I often see developers split everything into separate files but I prefer to keep the logic where it’s used unless it’s used in multiple places in which case I would put the getPosts function inside lib/posts.ts.

API endpoint for posts

🐿️ You can use the JSON Viewer Chrome extension for the highlighting.

Awesome! You created an API endpoint for posts you can reuse across your app (you can even make it public for others to consume). 🔥

Showing Posts

Now you can use the posts endpoint you just created to server-side render the posts for the page.

src/routes/+page.server.ts
import type { Post } from '$lib/types'

export async function load({ fetch }) {
	const response = await fetch('api/posts')
	const posts: Post[] = await response.json()
	return { posts }
}

🐿️ The fetch function from load has superpowers like being able to resolve the relative URL api/posts which would not work using regular fetch.

At this point you just need to loop over the posts and that’s it.

src/routes/+page.svelte
<script lang="ts">
	import { formatDate } from '$lib/utils'
	import * as config from '$lib/config'

	export let data
</script>

<svelte:head>
	<title>{config.title}</title>
</svelte:head>

<!-- Posts -->
<section>
	<ul class="posts">
		{#each data.posts as post}
			<li class="post">
				<a href={post.slug} class="title">{post.title}</a>
				<p class="date">{formatDate(post.date)}</p>
				<p class="description">{post.description}</p>
			</li>
		{/each}
	</ul>
</section>

<style>
	.posts {
		display: grid;
		gap: 2rem;
	}

	.post {
		max-inline-size: var(--size-content-3);
	}

	.post:not(:last-child) {
		border-bottom: 1px solid var(--border);
		padding-bottom: var(--size-7);
	}

	.title {
		font-size: var(--font-size-fluid-3);
		text-transform: capitalize;
	}

	.date {
		color: var(--text-2);
	}

	.description {
		margin-top: var(--size-3);
	}
</style>

I love using this function which uses the built-in browser API to format dates.

src/lib/utils.ts
type DateStyle = Intl.DateTimeFormatOptions['dateStyle']

export function formatDate(date: string, dateStyle: DateStyle = 'medium', locales = 'en') {
	// Safari is mad about dashes in the date
	const dateToFormat = new Date(date.replaceAll('-', '/'))
	const dateFormatter = new Intl.DateTimeFormat(locales, { dateStyle })
	return dateFormatter.format(dateToFormat)
}

Posts

Things are coming together! 💪

Showing A Single Post

Instead of doing routes/post/+page.md|svelte for every post I’m going to use a dynamic route routes/[slug]/+page.svelte that’s going to slurp up the post based on the slug.

Here is where picking mdsvex shines because I’m going to use a dynamic import to get the post which is going to have the content and metadata.

src/routes/[slug]/+page.ts
import { error } from '@sveltejs/kit'

export async function load({ params }) {
	try {
		const post = await import(`../../posts/${params.slug}.md`)

		return {
			content: post.default,
			meta: post.metadata
		}
	} catch (e) {
		error(404, `Could not find ${params.slug}`)
	}
}

Because the Markdown file is imported as a module and processed by mdsvex you can pass data.content as a Svelte component to <svelte:component this={data.content} />.

src/routes/[slug]/+page.svelte
<script lang="ts">
	import { formatDate } from '$lib/utils'

	export let data
</script>

<!-- SEO -->
<svelte:head>
	<title>{data.meta.title}</title>
	<meta property="og:type" content="article" />
	<meta property="og:title" content={data.meta.title} />
</svelte:head>

<article>
  <!-- Title -->
	<hgroup>
		<h1>{data.meta.title}</h1>
		<p>Published at {formatDate(data.meta.date)}</p>
	</hgroup>

  <!-- Tags -->
	<div class="tags">
		{#each data.meta.categories as category}
			<span class="surface-4">&num;{category}</span>
		{/each}
	</div>

  <!-- Post -->
	<div class="prose">
		<svelte:component this={data.content} />
	</div>
</article>

<style>
	article {
		max-inline-size: var(--size-content-3);
		margin-inline: auto;
	}

	h1 {
		text-transform: capitalize;
	}

	h1 + p {
		margin-top: var(--size-2);
		color: var(--text-2);
	}

	.tags {
		display: flex;
		gap: var(--size-3);
		margin-top: var(--size-7);
	}

	.tags > * {
		padding: var(--size-2) var(--size-3);
		border-radius: var(--radius-round);
	}
</style>

Let’s add some styles for the post which I’m going to do inside app.css because we don’t have control over the markup.

src/app.css
/* ... */

.prose :is(h2, h3, h4, h5, h6) {
	margin-top: var(--size-8);
	margin-bottom: var(--size-3);
}

.prose p:not(:is(h2, h3, h4, h5, h6) + p) {
	margin-top: var(--size-7);
}

.prose :is(ul, ol) {
	list-style-type: '🔥';
	padding-left: var(--size-5);
}

.prose :is(ul, ol) li {
	margin-block: var(--size-2);
	padding-inline-start: var(--size-2);
}

.prose pre {
	max-inline-size: 100%;
	padding: 1rem;
	border-radius: 8px;
	tab-size: 2;
}

Post

💪 Right now the tags are just using a <span> but can you turn them into links <a href="/category/{category}>{category}</a> so they point to a /category/[category] page that shows the posts based on the name of the category?

Everything looks great!

Syntax Highlighting

mdsvex uses Prism by default for syntax highlighting and you can have a look at Prism themes which you can include in your styles.

You can use a Prism theme and be done but I want to use a modern syntax highlighter like Shiki that uses the same highlighter as VS Code which means you can use real themes.

To use Shiki I’m going to create a custom highlighter which is only going to be a couple of lines of code.

Install Shiki.

terminal
npm i shiki

Create a custom highlighter.

svelte.config.js
// ...
import { mdsvex, escapeSvelte } from 'mdsvex'
import { getHighlighter } from 'shiki'

/** @type {import('mdsvex').MdsvexOptions} */
const mdsvexOptions = {
	extensions: ['.md'],
	highlight: {
		highlighter: async (code, lang = 'text') => {
			const highlighter = await getHighlighter({
				themes: ['poimandres'],
				langs: ['javascript', 'typescript']
			})
			await highlighter.loadLanguage('javascript', 'typescript')
			const html = escapeSvelte(highlighter.codeToHtml(code, { lang, theme: 'poimandres' }))
			return `{@html \`${html}\` }`
		}
	},
}

// ...
  • first I create the highlighter using shiki.getHighlighter and pass one of the VS Code themes you want (you can also give it a path to your theme)
  • you have to use escapeSvelte to escape some characters like { that are going to cause a problem in Svelte
  • Shiki is going to generate HTML that looks like your code in VS Code using the code and lang you passed
  • I want to insert {@html html} in the Svelte component to output the code block but we need to escape the backticks with \

I would love to take credit as a genius but I figured everything out by reading this response inside an mdsvex GitHub issue.

You can do a lot more with Shiki by reading their docs but if you want line numbers and highligthing you’re going to have to look through the Shiki issues on GitHub.

Using Components Inside Markdown

You can import regular Svelte components inside Markdown from interactive data visualizations to working code examples.

src/posts/counter.svelte
<script lang="ts">
	let count = 0

	const increment = () => (count += 1)
</script>

<button on:click={increment}>
	{count}
</button>
src/posts/example.md
<!-- ... -->
<script>
  import Counter from './counter.svelte'
</script>

## Counter

The counter is rendered inside Markdown.

<Counter />

Another great mdsvex feature is being able to replace elements with custom components.

One example where this is useful is for the <img> or <iframe> element where you might want set loading="lazy" to only load it when it’s in view but you can’t set attributes on an image like ![Text](image.webp) inside Markdown.

First you need to create a default mdsvex layout that’s going to wrap the Markdown files and you can name it anything but I’m going to name it mdsvex.svelte to avoid confusion with +layout.svelte.

svelte.config.js
/** @type {import('mdsvex').MdsvexOptions} */
const mdsvexOptions = {
	extensions: ['.md'],
	layout: {
		_: './src/mdsvex.svelte'
	},
	// ...
}

I’m going to create a custom img.svelte component but I’m going to use index.ts to export every custom component from lib/components/custom making it easier to use when you add more components in the future.

src/lib/components/custom/img.svelte
<script lang="ts">
	export let src: string
	export let alt: string
</script>

<img {src} {alt} loading="lazy" />
src/lib/components/custom/index.ts
import img from './img.svelte'
export { img }

The custom component receives the attributes of the element you want to replace like src and alt as props.

Inside the layout you have to import and export the custom component with the same name as the element you want to replace.

src/mdsvex.svelte
<script lang="ts" context="module">
	import { img } from '$lib/components/custom'
	export { img }
</script>

<slot />

Images and other media should be placed inside the static folder at the root of your project.

You can use images inside Markdown with ![Text](image.webp) and you should see that it was replaced with the custom component.

You can explore more of the options mdsvex offers like smartypants that replaces quotes with “real typographic punctuation”.

Using Markdown Plugins

There’s an entire world of abstract syntax trees (ASTs) which is what HTML or Markdown get turned into to be easily manipulated instead of using regular expressions.

For transforming HTML with plugins you can use rehype and for transforming Markdown with plugins you use remark.

I’m going to refer to them as Markdown plugins even if they’re general plugins for transforming HTML and Markdown.

mdsvex first parses the Markdown into a Markdown AST (MDAST) where remark plugins run and then it converts it into a HTML AST (HAST) where rehype plugins run.

You don’t have to understand ASTs but I recommend reading How to Modify Nodes in an Abstract Syntax Tree if you want to learn the fundamentals and write your own plugin which is just a JavaScript function.

mdsvex makes it easy to use these plugins and you only have to install the desired plugin then pass it into the remarkPlugins or rehypePlugins options array.

You can find these plugins on npm and in the repository for remark plugins or repository for rehype plugins.

I’m going to show you a couple of plugins, so you get an idea how simple it is to extend your Markdown blog:

  • I’m going to use remark-unwrap-images to remove <p> tags around images because they’re annoying for styling
  • I want to add slugs to headings like <h2 id="section"> to make it linkable as example.com/post#section using rehype-slug
  • I want to generate a table of contents based on the headings using remark-toc

Install the Markdown plugins.

terminal
npm i remark-unwrap-images remark-toc rehype-slug

Add them to the config.

svelte.config.js
// ...
import remarkUnwrapImages from 'remark-unwrap-images'
import remarkToc from 'remark-toc'
import rehypeSlug from 'rehype-slug'

/** @type {import('mdsvex').MdsvexOptions} */
const mdsvexOptions = {
	// ...
	remarkPlugins: [remarkUnwrapImages, [remarkToc, { tight: true }]],
	rehypePlugins: [rehypeSlug]
}

🐿️ You can pass options for the plugin like [plugin, { options }] which you can find in their docs. In this case { tight: true } removes <p> tags around <li>.

That’s how easy that was! 😄

Light And Dark Mode Toggle

Earlier we set ourselves up for success by using CSS variables which respects the users preference by using the prefers-color-scheme media query but we also included selectors when <html> has a color-scheme="dark" and color-scheme="light" attribute.

To make a theme toggle we need to write some JavaScript that’s going to check when the page loads if the user has a theme set in localStorage and set the attribute on <html> based on their preference and if not default to using the dark theme.

I’m going to write the code that checks for the theme in app.html because it’s going to load first and prevent issues like flashing.

Flashing happens when JavaScript is not loaded on the page and because of it when your component mounts it only then goes to localStorage to check if you set a theme.

src/app.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
	<head>
		<!-- ... -->
		<script type="module">
			const theme = localStorage.getItem('color-scheme')

			theme
				? document.documentElement.setAttribute('color-scheme', theme)
				: localStorage.setItem('color-scheme', 'dark')
		</script>
	</head>
	<!-- ... -->
</html>

I’m going to make a simple Svelte store that’s going to export the active theme so you can subscribe to it anywhere and get notified when it changes including toggleTheme to update it and setTheme to set the theme in case you want to use it.

src/lib/theme.ts
import { writable } from 'svelte/store'
import { browser } from '$app/environment'

type Theme = 'light' | 'dark'

// we set the theme in `app.html` to prevent flashing
const userTheme = browser && localStorage.getItem('color-scheme')

// create the store
export const theme = writable(userTheme ?? 'dark')

// update the theme
export function toggleTheme() {
	theme.update((currentTheme) => {
		const newTheme = currentTheme === 'dark' ? 'light' : 'dark'

		document.documentElement.setAttribute('color-scheme', newTheme)
		localStorage.setItem('color-scheme', newTheme)

		return newTheme
	})
}

// set the theme
export function setTheme(newTheme: Theme) {
	theme.set(newTheme)
}

💪 If you want to improve this I would use JavaScript to check the user preference with const preference = window.matchMedia('(prefers-color-scheme: dark)').matches and then use an event listener preference.addEventListener('change', (mediaQuery) => ...) to update the store value if it changes

I’m going to create a toggle.svelte component and use it inside header.svelte.

src/routes/toggle.svelte
<script lang="ts">
	import { fly } from 'svelte/transition'
	import { Moon, Sun } from 'lucide-svelte'
	import { theme, toggleTheme } from '$lib/theme'
</script>

<button on:click={toggleTheme} aria-label="Toggle theme">
	{#if $theme === 'dark'}
		<div in:fly={{ y: 10 }}>
			<Sun />
			<span>Light</span>
		</div>
	{:else}
		<div in:fly={{ y: -10 }}>
			<Moon />
			<span>Dark</span>
		</div>
	{/if}
</button>

<style>
	button {
		padding: 0;
		font-weight: inherit;
		background: none;
		border: none;
		box-shadow: none;
		overflow: hidden;
	}

	button > * {
		display: flex;
		gap: var(--size-2);
	}
</style>
header.svelte
<script lang="ts">
	import Toggle from './toggle.svelte'
	// ...
</script>

<nav>
	<!-- ... -->
	<Toggle />
</nav>

That’s it! 😎

Page Transitions

Adding some simple page transitions is going to give your site an air of whimsy and sophistication.

I have an entire post on SvelteKit Page Transitions but the gist is that we need to know when the url changed to destroy and recreate the page which is going to play the transition.

🐿️ You could use the $navigates store from SvelteKit as the key for the transition but it’s going to cause problems on slower connections if the page isn’t ready to load and play the transition for the current page since the navigation occured.

src/routes/+layout.ts.
export async function load({ url }) {
	return {
		url: url.pathname
	}
}
src/routes/transition.svelte
<script lang="ts">
	import { fade } from 'svelte/transition'

	export let url: string
</script>

{#key url}
	<div class="transition" in:fade>
		<slot />
	</div>
{/key}

<style>
	.transition {
		height: 100%;
	}
</style>
src/routes/+layout.svelte
<script lang="ts">
	import Footer from './footer.svelte'
	import Header from './header.svelte'
	import PageTransition from './transition.svelte'
	// ...
	export let data
</script>

<div class="layout">
	<Header />

	<main>
		<PageTransition url={data.url}>
			<slot />
		</PageTransition>
	</main>

	<Footer />
</div>

The site is a smooth operator! 🎷

RSS Feed

A lot of people prefer to get notified about updates in their RSS reader.

Creating an RSS feed in SvelteKit is simple as creating an API endpoint that returns XML.

src/routes/rss.xml/+server.ts
import * as config from '$lib/config'
import type { Post } from '$lib/types'

export async function GET({ fetch }) {
	const response = await fetch('api/posts')
	const posts: Post[] = await response.json()

	const headers = { 'Content-Type': 'application/xml' }

	const xml = `
		<rss xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0">
			<channel>
				<title>${config.title}</title>
				<description>${config.description}</description>
				<link>${config.url}</link>
				<atom:link href="${config.url}/rss.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/>
				${posts
					.map(
						(post) => `
						<item>
							<title>${post.title}</title>
							<description>${post.description}</description>
							<link>${config.url}/${post.slug}</link>
							<guid isPermaLink="true">${config.url}/${post.slug}</guid>
							<pubDate>${new Date(post.date).toUTCString()}</pubDate>
						</item>
					`
					)
					.join('')}
			</channel>
		</rss>
	`.trim()

	return new Response(xml, { headers })
}

🐿️ The rss.xml extension is optional. You could also name the posts endpoint posts.json if you wanted which is preferred if you use prerendering and have clashing route names.

This is the least XML required for an RSS feed which you can validate with W3C Feed Validation Service when you deploy the site.

You can include this markup in app.html so when people input your website URL in their RSS reader it’s going to pick it up.

src/app.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
	<head>
		<link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" href="/rss.xml" />
		<!-- ... -->
	</head>
	<!-- ... -->
</html>

Custom Error Page

Let’s customize the error page before we deploy the site by adding +error.svelte in routes.

🐿️ You can add +error.svelte inside other routes if you want but since we don’t have a lot of nested layouts this is fine.

src/routes/+error.svelte
<script>
	import { page } from '$app/stores'
</script>

<div class="error">
	<h1>{$page.status}: {$page.error?.message}</h1>
</div>

<style>
	.error {
		height: 100%;
		display: grid;
		place-content: center;
	}
</style>

Deployment

For deployment I’m going to use Vercel and prerender the content ahead of time before deploying it which means it’s going to be blazingly fast. 🔥

Prerendering means creating the HTML files at build time (when you run npm run build or vite build).

Prerendering your site takes one line of code.

src/routes/+layout.ts
export const prerender = true
// ...

You also need to prerender the RSS feed.

src/routes/rss.xml/+server.ts
export const prerender = true
// ...

If you use the prerender SvelteKit page option in the root layout SvelteKit is going to crawl the links in your site and prerender the pages (+page.svelte) and server routes (+server.ts).

If you have pages with form actions they can’t be prerendered because you need a server but SvelteKit is flexible and you can disable prerendering for that page.

I’m going to use the Vercel adapter and update the config.

terminal
# remove the default adapter
npm remove @sveltejs/adapter-auto

# add Vercel adapter
npm i -D @sveltejs/adapter-vercel
svelte.config.js
import adapter from '@sveltejs/adapter-vercel'
// ...

🐿️ Before deploying run npm run build and npm run preview to check for any obvious errors instead of finding out about it during deployment. This is going to create a .vercel folder which should be added to .gitignore.

Create a new project on GitHub and name it anything you want then push the code to GitHub.

terminal
# initialize Git repository
git init

# stage changes for every file
git add .

# add commit
git commmit -m "Add project"

# add remote repository
git remote add origin https://github.com/you/sveltekit-blog.git

# rename current branch to main
git branch -M main

# push the main branch to origin
git push -u origin main

Add a new project on Vercel and import your repository. You can leave the default options and press deploy which should take a minute.

Look at the Building output in case you run into errors in which case just stay calm and read the error like you would in local development because you probably forgot something or made a typo.

You should be greeted by a celebratory screen 🎉 where you can tap Continue to Dashboard and then tap Visit to see the site.

If you don’t like the name of the random URL Vercel assigned to your project go to Settings > Domains and tap Edit and give it a new domain name that ends with .vercel.app like shakespeare.vercel.app which is a great name already without having to use a custom domain name.

Each time you push to the GitHub repository Vercel is going to redeploy and run the build and bust the cache because it’s integrated with GitHub.

That’s it! 🎉

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