State Management

Nuxt provides powerful state management libraries and the useState composable to create a reactive and SSR-friendly shared state.

Nuxt provides the useState composable to create a reactive and SSR-friendly shared state across components.

useState is an SSR-friendly ref replacement. Its value will be preserved after server-side rendering (during client-side hydration) and shared across all components using a unique key.

Because the data inside useState will be serialized to JSON, it is important that it does not contain anything that cannot be serialized, such as classes, functions or symbols.
Read more about useState composable.

Best Practices

Never define const state = ref() outside of <script setup> or setup() function.
For example, doing export myState = ref({}) would result in state shared across requests on the server and can lead to memory leaks.
Instead use const useX = () => useState('x')

Examples

Basic Usage

In this example, we use a component-local counter state. Any other component that uses useState('counter') shares the same reactive state.

app.vue
<script setup lang="ts">
const counter = useState('counter', () => Math.round(Math.random() * 1000))
</script>

<template>
  <div>
    Counter: {{ counter }}
    <button @click="counter++">
      +
    </button>
    <button @click="counter--">
      -
    </button>
  </div>
</template>
Read and edit a live example in Docs > Examples > Features > State Management.
To globally invalidate cached state, see clearNuxtState util.

Initializing State

Most of the time, you will want to initialize your state with data that resolves asynchronously. You can use the app.vue component with the callOnce util to do so.

app.vue
<script setup lang="ts">
const websiteConfig = useState('config')

await callOnce(async () => {
  websiteConfig.value = await $fetch('https://my-cms.com/api/website-config')
})
</script>
This is similar to the nuxtServerInit action in Nuxt 2, which allows filling the initial state of your store server-side before rendering the page.
Read more in Docs > API > Utils > Call Once.

Usage with Pinia

In this example, we leverage the Pinia module to create a global store and use it across the app.

Make sure to install the Pinia module with npx nuxt module add pinia or follow the module's installation steps.
export const useWebsiteStore = defineStore('websiteStore', {
  state: () => ({
    name: '',
    description: '',
  }),
  actions: {
    async fetch () {
      const infos = await $fetch('https://api.nuxt.com/modules/pinia')

      this.name = infos.name
      this.description = infos.description
    },
  },
})

Advanced Usage

import type { Ref } from 'vue'

export const useLocale = () => {
  return useState<string>('locale', () => useDefaultLocale().value)
}

export const useDefaultLocale = (fallback = 'en-US') => {
  const locale = ref(fallback)
  if (import.meta.server) {
    const reqLocale = useRequestHeaders()['accept-language']?.split(',')[0]
    if (reqLocale) {
      locale.value = reqLocale
    }
  } else if (import.meta.client) {
    const navLang = navigator.language
    if (navLang) {
      locale.value = navLang
    }
  }
  return locale
}

export const useLocales = () => {
  const locale = useLocale()
  const locales = ref([
    'en-US',
    'en-GB',
    // ...,
    'ja-JP-u-ca-japanese',
  ])
  if (!locales.value.includes(locale.value)) {
    locales.value.unshift(locale.value)
  }
  return locales
}

export const useLocaleDate = (date: Ref<Date> | Date, locale = useLocale()) => {
  return computed(() => new Intl.DateTimeFormat(locale.value, { dateStyle: 'full' }).format(unref(date)))
}
Read and edit a live example in Docs > Examples > Advanced > Locale.

Shared State

By using auto-imported composables we can define global type-safe states and import them across the app.

composables/states.ts
export const useColor = () => useState<string>('color', () => 'pink')
app.vue
<script setup lang="ts">
// ---cut-start---
const useColor = () => useState<string>('color', () => 'pink')
// ---cut-end---
const color = useColor() // Same as useState('color')
</script>

<template>
  <p>Current color: {{ color }}</p>
</template>

Using third-party libraries

Nuxt used to rely on the Vuex library to provide global state management. If you are migrating from Nuxt 2, please head to the migration guide.

Nuxt is not opinionated about state management, so feel free to choose the right solution for your needs. There are multiple integrations with the most popular state management libraries, including:

  • Pinia - the official Vue recommendation
  • Harlem - immutable global state management
  • XState - state machine approach with tools for visualizing and testing your state logic