django_npm_dev

When you're using a tool like vite, webpack, or even just TailwindCSS and PostCSS to package frontend assets that require a build step with your Django site, you frequently need to start a separate development server using npm run dev whenever you're using the Django development server to work locally.

django_npm_dev provides a Django management command that starts that npm dev server in a separate thread and then starts Django's development server. Stopping Django's development server in any of the usual ways will also stop the npm dev script.

Frequently, I'm happy to just use a bash script like this one. When I need to hand a project to someone who works on Windows, though, that becomes a challenge. I also find that IDEs (and especially their built-in debuggers) work more smoothly with Django management commands than they do with shell scripts, in my experience.

Installation and Usage

Add django-npm-dev to your project using pip or your favorite package management tool.

pip install django-npm-dev

uv add django-npm-dev

Then add django_npm_dev to your INSTALLED_APPS in your site's settings.py

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...,
    'django_npm_dev',
    ...,
]

Now, instead of running npm run dev followed by python manage.py runserver to start your local development server, just run python manage.py dev runserver.

Tips

If you're using Vite, and you make changes to django templates in addition to assets built by Vite, you should use install django-browser-reload so that django template changes trigger a reload as well as changes to Vite-managed assets.

If NPM isn't on your path, specify the path to your NPM command in settings.py:

NPM_BIN_PATH=/opt/local/bin/npm

Credits

Reading Cory Zue's article about using Vite with Django and his comment when I suggested that this might fit with the starter he published as a companion made me think it belonged in its own package.

The NPM wrapper is an adapted version of the one from django-tailwind.

License

All original code in this repository is copyright 2025 Geoff Beier geoff@tuxpup.com. It's offered under the same MIT LICENSE as the NPM wrapper that I adapted from django-tailwind. Any other code distributed with this repository remains under copyright by its authors, and is used under their respective licenses.