Migrate to Nuxt 3: Pages and Layouts

Upgrade Guide
Migrate to Nuxt 3
Pages and Layouts

Learn how to migrate from Nuxt 2 to Nuxt 3 pages and layouts.

app.vue

Nuxt 3 provides a central entry point to your app via ~/app.vue.

If you don't have an app.vue file in your source directory, Nuxt will use its own default version.

This file is a great place to put any custom code that needs to be run once when your app starts up, as well as any components that are present on every page of your app. For example, if you only have one layout, you can move this to app.vue instead.

 Read more in Docs > Guide > Directory Structure > App.
 Read and edit a live example in Docs > Examples > Hello World.
Migration

Consider creating an app.vue file and including any logic that needs to run once at the top-level of your app. You can check out an example here.

Layouts

If you are using layouts in your app for multiple pages, there is only a slight change required.

In Nuxt 2, the <Nuxt> component is used within a layout to render the current page. In Nuxt 3, layouts use slots instead, so you will have to replace that component with a <slot />. This also allows advanced use cases with named and scoped slots. Read more about layouts.

You will also need to change how you define the layout used by a page using the definePageMeta compiler macro. Layouts will be kebab-cased. So layouts/customLayout.vue becomes custom-layout when referenced in your page.

Migration
Replace <Nuxt /> with <slot />
layouts/custom.vue
  <template>

    <div id="app-layout">

      <main>

-       <Nuxt />

+       <slot />

      </main>

    </div>

  </template>

Use definePageMeta to select the layout used by your page.
pages/index.vue
  <script>

+ definePageMeta({

+   layout: 'custom'

+ })

- export default {

-   layout: 'custom'

- }

  </script>

Move ~/layouts/_error.vue to ~/error.vue. See the error handling docs. If you want to ensure that this page uses a layout, you can use <NuxtLayout> directly within error.vue:
error.vue
<template>

  <div>

    <NuxtLayout name="default">

      <!-- -->

    </NuxtLayout>

  </div>

</template>

Pages

Nuxt 3 ships with an optional vue-router integration triggered by the existence of a pages/ directory in your source directory. If you only have a single page, you may consider instead moving it to app.vue for a lighter build.

Dynamic Routes

The format for defining dynamic routes in Nuxt 3 is slightly different from Nuxt 2, so you may need to rename some of the files within pages/.

Where you previously used _id to define a dynamic route parameter you now use [id].
Where you previously used _.vue to define a catch-all route, you now use [...slug].vue.
Nested Routes

In Nuxt 2, you will have defined any nested routes (with parent and child components) using <Nuxt> and <NuxtChild>. In Nuxt 3, these have been replaced with a single <NuxtPage> component.

Page Keys and Keep-alive Props

If you were passing a custom page key or keep-alive props to <Nuxt>, you will now use definePageMeta to set these options.

 Read more in Docs > Migration > Component Options.
Page and Layout Transitions

If you have been defining transitions for your page or layout directly in your component options, you will now need to use definePageMeta to set the transition. Since Vue 3, -enter and -leave CSS classes have been renamed. The style prop from <Nuxt> no longer applies to transition when used on <slot>, so move the styles to your -active class.

 Read more in Docs > Getting Started > Transitions.
Migration
Rename any pages with dynamic parameters to match the new format.
Update <Nuxt> and <NuxtChild> to be <NuxtPage>.
If you're using the Composition API, you can also migrate this.$route and this.$router to use useRoute and useRouter composables.
Example: Dynamic Routes
Nuxt 2
Nuxt 3
- URL: /users
- Page: /pages/users/index.vue

- URL: /users/some-user-name
- Page: /pages/users/_user.vue
- Usage: params.user

- URL: /users/some-user-name/edit
- Page: /pages/users/_user/edit.vue
- Usage: params.user

- URL: /users/anything-else
- Page: /pages/users/_.vue
- Usage: params.pathMatch

Example: Nested Routes and definePageMeta
Nuxt 2
Nuxt 3
<template>

  <div>

    <NuxtChild keep-alive :keep-alive-props="{ exclude: ['modal'] }" :nuxt-child-key="$route.slug" />

  </div>

</template>



<script>

export default {

  transition: 'page' // or { name: 'page' }

}

</script>

<NuxtLink> Component

Most of the syntax and functionality are the same for the global NuxtLink component. If you have been using the shortcut <NLink> format, you should update this to use <NuxtLink>.

<NuxtLink> is now a drop-in replacement for all links, even external ones. You can read more about it, and how to extend it to provide your own link component.

 Read more in Docs > API > Components > Nuxt Link.
Programmatic Navigation

When migrating from Nuxt 2 to Nuxt 3, you will have to update how you programmatically navigate your users. In Nuxt 2, you had access to the underlying Vue Router with this.$router. In Nuxt 3, you can use the navigateTo() utility method which allows you to pass a route and parameters to Vue Router.

Ensure to always await on navigateTo or chain its result by returning from functions.
Nuxt 2
Nuxt 3
<script>

export default {

  methods: {

    navigate(){

      this.$router.push({

        path: '/search',

        query: {

          name: 'first name',

          type: '1'

        }

      })

    }

  }

}

</script>


Plugins and Middleware

Learn how to migrate from Nuxt 2 to Nuxt 3 plugins and middleware.

Component Options

Learn how to migrate from Nuxt 2 components options to Nuxt 3 composables.