Generate /api endpoints folder during build

[astrojarred]

It would be great to have the /api endpoints folder generate automatically during build. At the moment users must run a script to produce this folder and then commit it to their repository.

Like in #7, some issues include:

• Vercel will reject the build outright if not /api directory or matching *.py endpoints are found in the repository.
• Even if you put a dummy file in that folder, and generate the rest during build, Vercel will not publish those functions.

[Mohamed-Kaizen]

hmm...let not talk about the api folder for a moment...let talk about...what file does Vercel need...b/c when i run node ./node_modules/sveltekit-python-vercel/esm/src/vite/sveltekit_python_vercel/bin.mjs ....the only file is generating that i didn't wrote as user is index.py...which is the entry point that we told the user to define in vercel.json, so...why not generate this file when the user run there app for the first time and commit it once ...b/c i assume the code inside the index.py is unchangeable and we can stop moving all the +server.py files into api folder ...like the serve.py we can tell the index.py...that....all the files are inside the src folder , with this the user will not run script and will only need to commit index.py once and never touched.

Plus we can generate the vercel.json for the user, when the dev server is running give them nice defaults

[astrojarred]

Good ideas here. In my testing, for some reason, all the +server.py files need to be already in the /api folder before Vercel even builds anything. Currently I also have the /api folder being populated during the build phase, but it's actually not necessary at the moment.

So at the moment every time someone adds a new endpoint, they need to regenerate the api folder locally before committing. Not sure it makes sense to add the api folder generation to the local dev step, since if they make any changes they'll have to regenerate it anyway before commit.

Perhaps there's a way around this with Vercel but I need to contact them.

As for generating the vercel.json, I'm a big hesitant since perhaps users want to add other options there, or already have one in their project. We don't want to blindly overwrite it.

But we could add an init script that takes care of much of the initial stuff in the docs to set up the project.

[Mohamed-Kaizen]

In my testing, for some reason, all the +server.py files need to be already in the /api folder before Vercel even builds anything.

Well...i think b/c you define them in the api folder, in vercel.json

{
  "buildCommand": "node ./node_modules/sveltekit-python-vercel/esm/src/vite/sveltekit_python_vercel/bin.mjs; vite build",
  "functions": {
    "api/**/*.py": {
      "runtime": "@vercel/python@3.0.7"
    }
  },
  "routes": [
    {
      "src": "/api/(.*)",
      "dest": "api/index.py"
    }
  ]
}

most like if you update the routes and functions you can give them the path to the +server.py inside the src/routes

So at the moment every time someone adds a new endpoint, they need to regenerate the api folder locally before committing. Not sure it makes sense to add the api folder generation to the local dev step, since if they make any changes they'll have to regenerate it anyway before commit.

that why if we drop the folder concept and only generate the index.py then that file is unchanged and all the routes +server.py will be inside the src/routes, so...if they only update these files when every we run the index.py generation code it will only create the file ....so...if the user update the +server.py then they will commit these files b/c they only update these files and the index.py will be the same no matter how many they update or run it in dev mode

As for generating the vercel.json, I'm a big hesitant since perhaps users want to add other options there, or already have one in their project. We don't want to blindly overwrite it.

well....we can create vercel-prod.json or vercel-temp.json ..in that file we can create all the routes and function to the +server.py inside the src/routes ...so..the user can check the file and copy past what they want or ignore it , and the can add that file into gitignore

[astrojarred]

that why if we drop the folder concept and only generate the index.py then that file is unchanged and all the routes +server.py will be inside the src/routes

Ah yes, I see what you mean now. Unfortunately all api routes must be inside the /api folder, otherwise Vercel will not detect them and not create serverless functions out of them. For the moment it seems that there is no workaround for this issue but I've reached out to the Vercel team to see what can be done about it.

To avoid the constant committing, there either needs to be a way for functions to access the filesystem of the site, or a way to programmatically add api functions during build. So far I have not found either to be possible, but hopefully support can help figure out if that's true or not.