Vue template or render function not defined yet I am using neither?

In my case, I was getting the error because I upgraded from Laravel Mix Version 2 to 5.

In Laravel Mix Version 2, you import vue components as follows:

Vue.component(
    'example-component', 
    require('./components/ExampleComponent.vue')
);

In Laravel Mix Version 5, you have to import your components as follows:

import ExampleComponent from './components/ExampleComponent.vue';

Vue.component('example-component', ExampleComponent);

Here is the documentation: https://laravel-mix.com/docs/5.0/upgrade

Better, to improve performance of your app, you can lazy load your components as follows:

Vue.component("ExampleComponent", () => import("./components/ExampleComponent"));

If you used to calle a component like this:

Vue.component('dashboard', require('./components/Dashboard.vue'));

I suppose that problem occurred when you update to laravel mix 5.0 or another libraries, so you have to put .default. As like below:

Vue.component('dashboard', require('./components/Dashboard.vue').default);

I solved the same problem.

The reason you're receiving that error is that you're using the runtime build which doesn't support templates in HTML files as seen here vuejs.org

In essence what happens with vue loaded files is that their templates are compile time converted into render functions where as your base function was trying to compile from your html element.

In my case, I imported my component (in router) as:

import bsw from 'common-mod/src/components/webcommon/webcommon'

It is simply solved if I changed it to

import bsw from 'common-mod/src/components/webcommon/webcommon.vue'

If someone else keeps getting the same error. Just add one extra div in your component template.

As the documentation says:

Component template should contain exactly one root element

Check this simple example:

 import yourComponent from '{path to component}'
    export default {
        components: {
            yourComponent
        },
}

 // Child component
 <template>
     <div> This is the one! </div>
 </template>

My previous code was

Vue.component('message', require('./components/message.vue'));

when i got such errors then i just add .default to it and it worked..

Vue.component('message', require('./components/message.vue').default);

In my case, I was using a default import:

import VueAutosuggest from 'vue-autosuggest';

Using a named import fixed it: import {VueAutosuggest} from 'vue-autosuggest';

There is an update from Laravel Mix 3 to Laravel 4 which may affect the answer for all components.
See https://laravel-mix.com/docs/4.0/upgrade for more details.

Let 'example-component' be the example component, whose address is './components/ExampleComponent.vue'.

Laravel 3:

 Vue.component('example-component', require('./components/ExampleComponent.vue'));

Laravel 4:

The change is that a .default is added.

 Vue.component('example-component', require('./components/ExampleComponent.vue').default);

As a Summary of all the posts

This error:

[Vue warn]: Failed to mount component: template or render function not defined.

You're getting because of a certain problem that's preventing your component from being mounted.

This can be caused by a lot of different issues, as you can see from the different posts here. Debug your component thoroughly, and be aware of everything that is maybe not done correctly and might prevent the mount.

I was getting the error when my component file was not encoded correctly...

Something like this should resolve the issue..

Vue.component(
'example-component', 
require('./components/ExampleComponent.vue').default);

I had this script in app.js in laravel which automatically adds all components in the component folder.

const files = require.context('./', true, /\.vue$/i)
files.keys().map(key => Vue.component(key.split('/').pop().split('.')[0], files(key)))

To make it work just add default

const files = require.context('./', true, /\.vue$/i)
files.keys().map(key => Vue.component(key.split('/').pop().split('.')[0], files(key).default))

I personally ran into the same error. None of the above solutions worked for me.

In fact, my component looks like this (in a file called my-component.js) :

Vue.component('my-component', {
    data() {
        return {
            ...
        }
    },
    props: {
        ...
    },
    template:`
        <div>
            ...
        </div>
    `
});

And I imported it like this in another component:

import MyComponent from '{path-to-folder}/my-component';

Vue.component('parent_component', {
    components: {
        MyComponent
    }
});

The weird thing is that this worked in some components but not in this "parent_component". So what I had to do in the component itself was stock it in a variable and export it as default.

const MyComponent = Vue.component('my-component', {
    data() {
        return {
            ...
        }
    },
    props: {
        ...
    },
    template:`
        <div>
            ...
        </div>
    `
});

export default MyComponent;

It could seem obvious but as I said above, it works in 1 other component without this so I couldn't really understand why, but at least, this works everywhere now.

I cannot believe how did I fix the issue! weird solution! I kept the app running then I removed all template tags and again I returned them back and it worked! but I don't understand what happened.

Make sure you import the .vue extension explicitly like so:

import myComponent from './my/component/my-component.vue';

If you don't add the .vue and you have a .ts file with the same name in that directory, for example, if you're separating the js/ts from the template and linking it like this inside of my-component.vue:

<script lang="ts" src="./my-component.ts"></script>

... then the import will bring in the .ts by default and so there really is no template or render function defined because it didn't import the .vue template.

When you tell it to use .vue in the import, then it finds your template right away.

I am using Typescript with vue-property-decorator and what happened to me is that my IDE auto-completed "MyComponent.vue.js" instead of "MyComponent.vue". That got me this error.

It seems like the moral of the story is that if you get this error and you are using any kind of single-file component setup, check your imports in the router.

When used with storybook and typescirpt, I had to add

.storybook/webpack.config.js

const path = require('path');

module.exports = async ({ config, mode }) => {

    config.module.rules.push({
        test: /\.ts$/,
        exclude: /node_modules/,
        use: [
            {
                loader: 'ts-loader',
                options: {
                    appendTsSuffixTo: [/\.vue$/],
                    transpileOnly: true
                },
            }
        ],
    });

    return config;
};

I'll add this here b/c there seem to be a number of different reasons why this very frustrating error can appear. In my case, it was a question of syntax in my import statement. I had

import DataTable from '@/components/data-table/DataTable';

when I should have had

import DataTable from '@/components/data-table/';

Your project setup and configuration may vary but if you're getting this error I suggest that you check that the import syntax for your component is as expected for your project.

in my case, it worked for me

const routes = [
{ path: '/dashboard', component: require('./components/Dashboard.vue').default },
{ path: '/profile', component: require('./components/Profile.vue').default }]

This error was for me because of wrong import

instead

components: {
  MyComp: import('./MyComp.vue'),
}

write

components: {
  MyComp: () => import('./MyComp.vue'),
}

You are missing the <template> tag for the HTML part.

Try adding .default in you require component

   let routes = [{
   path: '/dashboard',
   component: require('./components/Dashboard.vue').default
  }
]

let allSalary = require('./components/salary/index.vue');

instead use this

let allSalary = require('./components/salary/index.vue').default;

I got same error before I forgot to enclose component content in template element.

I have this initially

import Vue from 'vue';
import VueRouter from 'vue-router';
import Home from './com/Home.vue';

Vue.use(VueRouter);

Vue.router = new VueRouter({
    mode: 'history',
    routes: [
        {
            path: '/',
            name: 'home',
            component: Home
        },
    ]
});

Then in Home.vue I have:

<h1>Hello Vue</h1>

Hence the error:

Failed to mount component: template or render function not defined.

found in

---> <Home> at resources/js/com/Home.vue
       <Root>

Enclosing in element fixed the error:

<template>
   <h1>Hello Vue</h1>
</template>

Yet another idea to throw in to the mix... In my case, the component throwing the error was a template-less component with a custom render() function. I couldn't see why it wasn't working, until I realised that I hadn't put <script>...</script> tags around the code in the component (seemed unnecessary, since I had no template or style tags either). Not sure why this got past the compiler...?

Either way... make sure you use your <script> tags ;-)

Similar issue here in my visual.ts file i had to change:

import { createApp } from 'vue'
import Visual from './Visual.vue'
- const app = createApp({Visual}).mount('#visual')
+ const app = createApp(Visual).mount('#visual')

In my case ,my child component was blank ! And i was importing it in parent component without any template,script or style(complete blank child.vue file). So i just added above template in my child component and its working fine.

That was a mistake when I worked at Laravel. The code that worked for me

//require('./bootstrap');
window.axios = require('axios');
window.axios.defaults.headers.common['X-Requested-With'] = 'XMLHttpRequest';

window.Vue = require('vue');
import Vue from 'vue'

Vue.component('dictionary-index',  () => import('./components/DictionaryIndex.vue'));

Vue.component('dictionary-create',  () => import('./components/DictionaryCreate.vue'));

Vue.component('dictionary-cat',  () => import('./components/DictionaryCategory.vue'));

const app = new Vue({
    el: '#app',
});

I solved this by removing the node_modules directory and run npm install and npm run dev again.