You will notice in the project structure we have two directories for assets: /public/ and /src/assets/. What is the difference between them? Some are static assets while the others are processed and embedded by the build system.

So let's try to answer the question above. We'll first talk about using regular assets then we'll see what the difference is for static assets.

In *.vue components, all your templates and CSS are parsed by vue-html-loader and css-loader to look for asset URLs. For example, in <img src="./logo.png"> and background: url(./logo.png), "./logo.png" is a relative asset path and will be resolved by Webpack as a module dependency.

Because logo.png is not JavaScript, when treated as a module dependency, we need to use url-loader and file-loader to process it. Quasar CLI has already configured these webpack loaders for you, so you basically get features such as filename fingerprinting and conditional base64 inlining for free, while being able to use relative/module paths without worrying about deployment.

Since these assets may be inlined/copied/renamed during build, they are essentially part of your source code. This is why it is recommended to place Webpack-processed assets inside /src/assets, along side other source files. In fact, you don't even have to put them all in /src/assets: you can organize them based on the module/component using them. For example, you can put each component in its own directory, with its static assets right next to it.

Relative URLs, e.g. ./assets/logo.png will be interpreted as a module dependency. They will be replaced with an auto-generated URL based on your Webpack output configuration.

URLs prefixed with ~ are treated as a module request, similar to require('some-module/image.png'). You need to use this prefix if you want to leverage Webpack's module resolving configurations. Quasar provides assets Webpack alias out of the box, so it is recommended that you use it like this: <img src="~assets/logo.png">. Notice ~ in front of 'assets'.

Root-relative URLs (e.g. /logo.png -- where '/' is your publicPath) or logo.png are not processed at all. This should be placed in public/. These won't be processed by Webpack at all. The statics folder is simply copied over to the distributable folder as-is.

Quasar has some smart algorithms behind the curtains which ensure that no matter what you build (SPA, PWA, Cordova, Electron), your statics are correctly referenced if and only if they do not use a relative path.

<!-- Good! -->
<img src="logo.png" />

<!--
  BAD! Works until you change vue router
  mode (hash/history) or your public path.
  Don't!
-->
<img src="/logo.png" />

Please note that whenever you bind "src" to a variable in your Vue scope, it must be one from the statics folder. The reason is simple: the URL is dynamic, so Webpack (which packs up assets at compile time) doesn't know which file you'll be referencing at runtime, so it won't process the URL.

<template>
    <!-- imageSrc MUST reference a file from /public -->
    <img :src="imageSrc" />
</template>

<script>
    export default {
        setup() {
            return {
                /*
        Referencing /public.
        Notice string doesn't start with a slash. (/)
      */
                imageSrc: "logo.png",
            };
        },
    };
</script>

You can force serving static assets by binding src to a value with Vue. Instead of src="path/to/image" use :src=" 'path/to/image' " or :src="imageSrc". Please note the usage of single quotes within double quotes on the second code example (spaces have been added to see this visually on the documentation website - normally you would not have the spaces).

In order for Webpack to return the correct asset paths, you need to use require('./relative/path/to/file.jpg'), which will get processed by file-loader and returns the resolved URL. For example:

computed: {
  background () {
    return require('./bgs/' + this.id + '.jpg')
  }
}

Note the above example will include every image under ./bgs/ in the final build. This is because Webpack cannot guess which of them will be used at runtime, so it includes them all.