Rsbuild supports importing static assets, including images, fonts, audio, and video.
Static assets are files that are part of a web application and don't change during use. Examples include images, fonts, media files, stylesheets, and JavaScript files. These assets are typically stored on a web server or CDN and delivered to the user's browser when they access the application. Since they don't change, static assets can be cached by the browser, improving application performance.
Rsbuild supports these formats by default:
To import assets in other formats, refer to Extend Asset Types.
SVG images are a special case. Rsbuild supports converting SVG to React components, so SVG files are processed separately. For details, see SVGR Plugin.
In JavaScript files, import static assets using relative paths:
Importing with alias is also supported:
Rsbuild supports using JavaScript's native URL and import.meta.url to import static assets.
When using new URL() to reference .js or .ts files, they are treated as URL assets and are not processed by Rsbuild's built-in SWC loader.
Similarly, when using new URL() to reference .css or .scss files, they are treated as URL assets and are not processed by Rsbuild's built-in CSS loaders.
In CSS files, you can reference static assets using relative paths:
Importing with alias is also supported:
If you want to reference static assets using absolute paths in CSS files:
By default, Rsbuild's built-in css-loader will resolve absolute paths in url() and look for the specified modules. If you want to skip resolving absolute paths, you can configure tools.cssLoader to filter out specific paths. Filtered paths will be left unchanged in the code.
The result of importing static assets depends on the file size:
Adding the ?url query parameter ensures the asset is always loaded as a separate file and returns a URL:
Adding the ?inline query parameter ensures the asset is always inlined in the code, regardless of file size:
For a more detailed introduction to asset inlining, refer to the Static Asset Inlining section.
Rsbuild supports using the ?raw query parameter to import the raw content of static assets as a string in JavaScript.
Rsbuild also supports importing the raw content of JavaScript, TypeScript, and JSX files through the ?raw query parameter.
You can also use the ?raw query parameter to import the raw content of CSS files, see CSS.
Rsbuild >= 1.3.0 supports the ?raw query parameter, and >= 1.4.0 supports importing the raw content of JS and TS files.
When static assets are imported, they will be output to the dist directory. You can:
Read Output Files for details.
The URL returned after importing an asset will automatically include the path prefix:
dev.assetPrefix or output.assetPrefix is not configured, the value of server.base will be automatically used as the default prefix.For example, you can set output.assetPrefix to https://example.com:
The public folder at the project root can be used to place some static assets. These assets will not be built by Rsbuild and can be directly referenced via URL.
/.For example, you can place files such as robots.txt, manifest.json, or favicon.ico in the public folder.
You can reference files in the public directory via a URL.
For example, in an HTML template, the ./public/favicon.ico file can be referenced as /favicon.ico, BASE_URL is the base path of the server.
Keep these points in mind when using the public folder:
/src/assets directory.dist). Please be careful to avoid name conflicts with the output files. When files in the public folder have the same name as outputs, the outputs have higher priority and will overwrite the files with the same name in the public folder. This feature can be disabled by setting server.publicDir.copyOnBuild to false.Rsbuild provides the server.publicDir option which can be used to customize the name and behavior of the public folder, as well as to disable it.
When you import static assets in TypeScript code, TypeScript may prompt that the module is missing a type definition:
To fix this, you need to add a type declaration file for the static assets, please create a src/env.d.ts file, and add the corresponding type declaration.
@rsbuild/core package is installed, you can reference the preset types provided by @rsbuild/core:After adding the type declaration, if the type error still exists, you can try to restart the current IDE, or adjust the directory where env.d.ts is located, making sure that TypeScript can correctly identify the type definition.
If the built-in asset types in Rsbuild cannot meet your requirements, you can extend additional static asset types in the following ways.
source.assetsIncludeBy using the source.assetsInclude config, you can specify additional file types to be treated as static assets.
After adding the above configuration, you can import *.pdf files in your code, for example:
tools.rspackYou can modify the built-in Rspack configuration and add custom static assets handling rules via tools.rspack.
For example, to treat *.pdf files as assets and output them to the dist directory, you can add the following configuration:
For more information about asset modules, please refer to Rspack - Asset modules.
Extended static asset types will be affected by the following configurations:
In some scenarios, you may need to bypass the built-in assets processing rules of Rsbuild and add some custom rules.
Taking PNG image as an example, you need to:
.png files using the exclude method.When using image assets, you can choose an appropriate image format according to the pros and cons in the table below.
| Format | Pros | Cons | Scenarios |
|---|---|---|---|
| PNG | Lossless compression, no loss of picture details, no distortion, support for translucency | Not suitable for pictures with complex color tables | Suitable for pictures with few colors and well-defined borders, suitable for logos, icons, transparent images and other scenes |
| JPG | Rich colors | Lossy compression, which will cause image distortion, does not support transparency | Suitable for pictures with a large number of colors, gradients, and overly complex pictures, suitable for portrait photos, landscapes and other scenes |
| WebP | Supports both lossy and lossless compression, supports transparency, and is much smaller than PNG and JPG | iOS compatibility is not good | Pixel images of almost any scene, and the hosting environment that supports WebP, should prefer WebP image format |
| SVG | Lossless format, no distortion, supports transparency | Not suitable for complex graphics | Suitable for vector graphics, suitable for icons |