How to watch public directory in Vite project for hot-reload?

Question

I have a react project configured with Vite.
Hot reload works great, but I use react-i18next for multiple language support and this is my structure:

public
  -> en
    -> translation.json
  -> ru
    -> translation.json

When I change the translation.json files, Vite doesn't watch it, and I have to refresh the page to see the changes.

Is there a way to tell Vite to watch all the files in the public directory?

Answer 1

I've modified flydev's answer so that it can hot-reload the i18n-dependent components without reloading the whole page. (Currently using in a typescript project)

import { PluginOption } from "vite";

export default function I18nHotReload(): PluginOption {
  return {
    name: 'i18n-hot-reload',
    handleHotUpdate({ file, server }) {
      if (file.includes('locales') && file.endsWith('.json')) {
        console.log('Locale file updated')
        server.ws.send({
          type: "custom",
          event: "locales-update",
        });
      }
    },
  }
}

Then adding it to the vite's plugins:

plugins: [
    ...,
    i18nHotReload(),
]

And then adding the listener anywhere your code can reach (I'm using it in the i18n initial config file)

if (import.meta.hot) {
  import.meta.hot.on('locales-update', () => {
    i18n.reloadResources().then(() => {
      i18n.changeLanguage(i18n.language)
    })
  })
}

i18n.reloadResources() alone doesn't trigger the translations hot reload