Motivation

As for the date of writing this post it is impossible to dynamically generate sitemap.xml in NuxtJS for dynamic routes using @nuxtjs/sitemap.

As the documentation for the module says, you have manually type all your dynamic routes into the routes array of sitemap object in nuxt.config.js.

// nuxt.config.js
{
  sitemap: {
    hostname: 'https://example.com',
    gzip: true,
    exclude: [
      '/secret',
      '/admin/**'
    ],
    routes: [
      'dynamic-route-one',
      'dynamic-route-two',
    ]
  }
}

There is also another way, where you have to create a script that will make all the API calls to your backend server then will generate an array of routes that the sitemap object in the nuxt.config.js will then consume. More on that you can search for yourself or take a look at this article.

But I was very curious if there is another way, because it can be a pain the in the ass to type in all the dynamic routes manually or to make a lot of the API calls.

Disclaimer

After reading this post you might think that this way of generating
sitemap for dynamic routes is a bit hacky. And you are absolutely true. There is only one official way of doing it. Use at your own risk.

Watered down theory

Since Nuxt v2.13 a new option in nuxt.config.js is available:

// nuxt.config.js
export default {
  generate: {
    crawler: false // default - true
  }
}

A quote from the documentation:

As of Nuxt >= v2.13 Nuxt.js comes with a crawler installed that will crawl your relative links and generate your dynamic links based on these links. If you want to disable this feature you can set the value to false.

I have created a repository which has both dynamic and static routes and if we run npm run generate in the terminal we can see our dynamic routes being generated as individual html files:

But also you can see that the path to the dynamic route being printed out into the terminal, eg. - Generated route "/users/10". So if it is printed out, maybe it is stored somewhere and we can obtain it or we can capture it while it is being printed out and we can store it.

Coding part

Lets quickly install @nuxtjs/sitemap module by typing in the terminal:

npm install @nuxtjs/sitemap
or
yarn add @nuxtjs/sitemap

then add it to nuxt.config.js like this:

// nuxt.config.js
modules: [
    // your other modules
    '@nuxtjs/sitemap'
  ],

and configure it like this:

// nuxt.config.js
sitemap: {
    hostname: 'https://my-host.com',
    gzip: true,
    exclude: [
      '/exclude-one',
      '/exclude-two'
    ],
    defaults: {
      changefreq: 'daily',
      priority: 1,
      lastmod: new Date()
    }
  },

By running npm run generate again the in terminal we can ensure that dynamic routes are being generated but not being added to the sitemap.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1" xmlns:mobile="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-mobile/1.0" xmlns:news="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-news/0.9" xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/albums</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T11:19:36.882Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/todos</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T11:19:36.882Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/users</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T11:19:36.882Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T11:19:36.882Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
</urlset>

In order to obtain those generated routes paths we will use NuxtJS hooks which can be used in the NuxtJS modules.

To create a module just make a modules folder in your project directory with a file inside called generator.ts

Note: I am using TypeScript here, if you are using vanilla JavaScript it should be generator.js

// nuxt.config.js
 buildModules: [
    // other build modules
    '@/modules/generator'
  ],

Inside the generator.ts paste the following code and let's reflect on it a little bit.

import { Module } from '@nuxt/types'

const generator: Module = function () {
  this.nuxt.hook('generate:done', async (context: any) => {
    const routesToExclude: string[] =
    process.env.NUXT_ENV_EXCLUDE_ROUTES
      ? process.env.NUXT_ENV_EXCLUDE_ROUTES.split(',') : []
    const allRoutes: string[] = await Array.from(context.generatedRoutes)
    const routes: string[] = await allRoutes.filter((route: string) => !routesToExclude.includes(route))
    this.nuxt.options.sitemap.routes = await [...routes]
  })
}

export default generator

1) We have defined a generator function that is exported and will be injected into NuxtJS.
2) We have subscribed to a generate:done hook and upon hook completion the code inside the function will be executed.
3) If you take a look here you will see that a certain context will be returned by the hook. If you console.log that context inside our module, you will see a generatedRoutes Set
4) Inside routesToExclude I use a ternary operator to ensure that I do have some data in my NUXT_ENV_EXCLUDE_ROUTES environment variable:

// .env
NUXT_ENV_EXCLUDE_ROUTES = '/exclude-one,/exclude-two'

Then I divide my string into substrings to become an array of strings by using .split method.
5) Inside allRoutes I transform Set into an Array by using Array.from method.
6) I filter out all the routes I want to exclude by using filter method in routes
7) And lastly i spread my filtered routes into the routes property of the sitemap object: this.nuxt.options.sitemap.routes = await [...routes]

Now if you run npm run generate again you will see dynamic routes in the sitemap.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1" xmlns:mobile="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-mobile/1.0" xmlns:news="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-news/0.9" xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/albums</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/todos</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/users</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/users/1</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/users/2</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/users/3</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/users/4</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/users/5</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/users/6</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/users/7</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/users/8</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/users/9</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>https://my-host.com/users/10</loc>
      <lastmod>2020-10-13T12:09:44.775Z</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
</urlset>

For those who are not familiar with TypeScript

Leave a comment below or DM me, i will try to help you out.

Links

Live preview can be found here - https://andynoir.github.io/article-nuxt-dynamic-sitemap/
Sitemap here https://andynoir.github.io/article-nuxt-dynamic-sitemap/sitemap.xml
GitHub repo here - https://github.com/andynoir/article-nuxt-dynamic-sitemap

Blog

Sitemap for dynamic routes in NuxtJS

Andrey Gaisinskii