VueJS

Getting Started with Tailwind in Vue

Jul 19, 2021

7 min read

Introduction

Tailwind CSS has taken the front end development world by storm. If you haven't heard of it yet, Tailwind describes itself as, "a utility-first CSS framework packed with classes like flex, pt-4, text-center, and rotate-90, that can be composed to build any design, directly in your markup." Rather than using semantic class names (like "button" or "title"), you utilize these smaller utility classes to build your components.

There are many ways to integrate Tailwind within a Vue application. In this article, we'll be talking about a few of the best practices for installing and utilizing Tailwind in a Vue application.

Vue CLI

Installing Tailwind in a Vue CLI app is probably the easiest experience available. There is a CLI plugin that does everything we need, including installing Tailwind, and configuring PostCSS for us. Even better, it works for both Vue 2 and 3!

In your terminal, at the root of your application, run the following command:

vue add tailwind

The CLI will then install the plugin. You will be asked how complete a Tailwind configuration file you want (none, minimal, or full). Choose "minimal" for now - it will create the file, but will not populate it with any custom values. Once the terminal has finished, you're done!

There are a couple considerations to keep in mind when using this approach:

As of this writing, the CLI plugin has not been updated in a few months. It is currently installing Tailwind version 2.0.2 (the current latest is 2.2.4). This is easy enough to adjust manually, but you need to be aware of it to make the change yourself.
The plugin is also providing the PostCSS 7 compatible build. For the most part, this doesn't make a huge difference. The Tailwind docs notes that the compatibility build is identical with the main build, so you won't be missing out on any features. For now, this should be fine, but it could lead to issues down the road if you want to use PostCSS 8 plugins (or if Tailwind decides to stop providing backwards-compatible builds). If you're using Vue 3.0.6 or greater, you should be able to upgrade to the main builds. However, your should make sure to update all your PostCSS plugins to the latest main builds, not just Tailwind.

Vite

The Tailwind Docs include instructions on installing Tailwind with Vite. While it isn't as straightforward as the Vue CLI plugin, it's still pretty simple to get started in Vite.

First, install Tailwind, PostCSS 8, and Autoprefixer in your repository:

npm install -D tailwindcss@latest postcss@latest autoprefixer@latest

Then, run the Tailwind CLI command to create a default configuration file for both Tailwind and PostCSS:

npx tailwindcss init -p

This will create two files:

tailwind.config.js
postcss.config.js

Unless you want to make a change to either Tailwind or PostCSS, you won't have to touch these files. The docs recommend that you configure the purge option, which is used by Tailwind to purge its unused styles. With this change, your tailwind.config.js file should look like this:

// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  mode: 'jit',
  purge: ['./index.html', './src/**/*.{vue,js,ts,jsx,tsx}'],
  darkMode: false, // or 'media' or 'class'
  theme: {
    extend: {},
  },
  variants: {
    extend: {},
  },
  plugins: [],
}

Note that we also added the mode: 'jit' key to the configuration. This enables Tailwind's Just-In-Time mode, which is a more performant experience, and enables a number of other Tailwind features. Read the documentation to learn more, and better understand what you're getting out of this.

Now, let's create a base CSS file to import Tailwind's classes into. The Tailwind docs suggest using ./src/index.css, but I would recommend creating a separate CSS file just for Tailwind. Let's call it tailwind.css. In that file, put the following:

/* ./src/tailwind.css */
@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;

This uses PostCSS to import the various classes and utilities that Tailwind uses. Then, we just need to import this file in our main.js file like this:

// ./src/main.js
import { createApp } from 'vue'
import App from './App.vue'
import './index.css'
import './tailwind.css'

createApp(App).mount('#app')

And we're done! Tailwind is now available in your Vite application. Make sure to clear out the index.css file of any styles you do not want. In practice, that file will probably be much smaller than you may be used to, but it's still useful to keep your custom styles separate from Tailwind.

Nuxt

Nuxt has an amazing plugin ecosystem, and there is a Tailwind plugin available for us to use here as well. Unlike with Vue CLI, there's a bit more manual work involved to install a Nuxt plugin, so let's get started!

First, make sure your Nuxt application is at least version 2.15.3. This is the release of Nuxt that supports PostCSS 8. Unlike Vue CLI, this plugin provides the main build of Tailwind, not the compatibility build for PostCSS 7. You can upgrade Nuxt by running npm update nuxt.

Once you have confirmed that your Nuxt app is ready, run the following command in your terminal:

npm install --save-dev @nuxtjs/tailwindcss postcss@latest

This will install Tailwind and its required plugins for you. Then, in your nuxt.config.js, add the plugin to your buildModules:

export default {
  buildModules: ['@nuxtjs/tailwindcss']
}

Finally, run npx tailwindcss init to create the Tailwind configuration file. And that's it! Tailwind is now ready to go in your Nuxt application.

You may notice that there's a lot less work here than in Vite (and a lot fewer files being created than in Vue CLI). With the Nuxt plugin, if you do not have a tailwind.css file where styles are being injected, Nuxt will create it for you (the same is true for the tailwind.config.js file, but typically you'll want that anyway to enable JIT mode, or other custom configurations).

Tailwind Viewer

One benefit of the Nuxt plugin is the Tailwind Viewer. This allows you to previous the styles currently enabled in your Tailwind configuration, and copy/paste the classes into your UI. By itself this is a great feature, but when you start working with custom colors or other features, it can be invaluable to preview them before adding the classes to your template.

Conclusion

We've walked through adding Tailwind to a Vue application in three of the most common tools to build Vue applications. In general, the process is the same:

Install Tailwind, PostCSS, and Autoprefixer
Configure Tailwind and PostCSS
Import a CSS file that includes the Tailwind classes to your application

If you are using a custom setup for your Vue site, you should be able to apply these steps to your own setup in order to get Tailwind up and running. There are also a number of resources available if you run into any problems, including a Discord server and GitHub Discussions, where you can ask for help from other Tailwind users.

A note on utility-first CSS

As I'm writing this, I'm aware that utility-first CSS is not for everyone. If that sounds like you, and you made it this far, one thing about Tailwind that isn't highlighted as much as it should be is how the configuration allows for building a coherent design system. How often do you see multiple configuration files for Sass that are nothing but variables ($primary, $red, etc.)? All of this can be handled within Tailwind's configuration file, with the added benefit of generating classes for text, backgrounds, borders, and more to utilize those colors. Also, Tailwind already comes built-in with a number of great design decisions for padding and margin, flexbox, and more, making the work of building a design system that much easier.

Also, Tailwind provides a special directive, @apply, that lets you utilize Tailwind classes in standard CSS. This means that, rather than using the utility classes Tailwind provides in your template, you can build out custom classes (like .card or .button) while still benefitting from Tailwind's other features. Even better, using a plugin like PostCSS Nested, you can get nested CSS, just like in Sass or other CSS preprocessors.

Conisder the following component:

<template>
  <button class="bg-red-100 px-4 py-3 hover:bg-red-300">
    Tailwind Button
  </button>
</template>

This is a fairly simple button, with a background color, padding on width and height, and a hover attribute. Already, we can see a number of other changes to make (add some drop shadow, transitions, different styles for disabled state, and so on). Using purely Tailwind, that could lead to a large number of classes on the button element.

Let's say you don't like having those large class attributes, but you still want the other benefits of Tailwind. Here's the same example, using @apply to build a custom .button class:

<template>
  <button class="button">
    Class Button
  </button>
</template>

<style lang="postcss">
  .button {
    @apply bg-red-100 px-4 py-3;

    &:hover {
      @apply bg-red-300;
    }
  }
</style>

Nice! Our template is a lot simpler, and the styles are contained in our style block. That said, most Tailwind users will probably want to go without using @apply (Adam Wathan, the creator of Tailwind, has said that he almost never uses @apply). That doesn't make this any less valid, and is a perfect way to balance to strengths of Tailwind with traditional methodologies of writing CSS like BEM. If you're hesitant to try Tailwind because of its large number of classes, give this a try and see how you like it!

And remember, the goal of using Tailwind or any other CSS framework or methodology is to build a stellar experience for your application's users. Don't lose focus of that while deciding whether to adopt Tailwind in your latest Vue application. Try it out, see if it works for you, and decide for yourself whether it fits your project or style of writing CSS.

Until next time!

This Dot is a consultancy dedicated to guiding companies through their modernization and digital transformation journeys. Specializing in replatforming, modernizing, and launching new initiatives, we stand out by taking true ownership of your engineering projects.

We love helping teams with projects that have missed their deadlines or helping keep your strategic digital initiatives on course. Check out our case studies and our clients that trust us with their engineering.

Lindsay Wardell

Lindsay is a software engineer at This Dot Labs, and a host on the podcast Views on Vue. She loves learning about new languages and tools, and sharing that knowledge with the community.

@lindsaykwardell @lindsaykwardell

Getting started with Vitepress

Getting started with Vitepress to create your blog site Have you heard about Vitepress, but you have not checked it out at it yet? Well, in this article, we are going to cover the basic setup and share what all the fuss about this new fantastic static site generator. If you are looking for something that would allow you to quickly create a static site with Markdown support, search, Light/Dark theme, advertisement, navigation, and much more, then Vitepress is what you are looking for. Suppose you want some proof of Vitepress's power without having to invest any further time, I suggest you head over to the main Vitepress site (vitepress.dev) and experience what Vitepress can do, as the official site is built on Vitepress! What is Vitepress Vitepress is a powerful Static Site Generator powered by Vite mainly used for Documentation and Blogs with the default theme, and open to customization to be used for anything you may need it to with custom themes and theme overrides.. Vitepress power comes from its low learning curve, powerful configuration settings, and the ability to easily customize it. For example, internationalization is built-in, Theme toggling is built-in and even full-site searches require a single line in the config to be set up. What makes Vitepress so powerful is its extensive configuration and the fact that it can be customized by overriding the existing theme, creating your theme, or simply enhancing pages with custom Vue code. Prerequisites To successfully run the following demo, you will need: - Node.js version 18 or higher. - Terminal for accessing VitePress via its command line interface (CLI). - Text Editor with Markdown syntax support. - VSCode is recommended, along with the official Vue extension. Create your project To create the project, we will follow the steps shown in the official Getting Started guide. If you want to set up a Vitepress project quickly, run the following steps: - Create a new folder mkdir vitepress-tutorial - Access the folder cd vitepress-tutorial - Install Vitepress npm add -D vitepress - Run the Wizard npx vitepress init - Answer the questions: - Where should VitePress initialize the config? - Site title - Site Description - Theme - Do you want Typescript support? - run npm run docs:dev - Enjoy your site. After you run the above steps, your Vitepress will be ready and running as shown below What is available out of the box The site comes fully set up with enough to get you started. Let's see what features are available within the software: - Navbar: The site comes with a Navbar that already includes links to our blog pages - Light/Dark theme: Out of the box theming - Home page: Basic Homepage layout - Blogs: Two different blog posts with sidebar navigation All of the above is available with just 4 files! Let's move forward and see how to customize our app. Overriding the homepage It is time to modify our site by accessing its folders. What you will probably notice when opening the site, is that Vitepress follows a very simple file structure, in fact, a new installation just includes 4 extra files on top of the expected package.json and node_modules. Let's update our homepage to make it more unique. Because Vitepress follows a "file-system based router" we can find this file within the root of the project within a file called index.md. This file will be accessible at "/" or "/index.html" of your site. The content of the file is the following: ` As you can see, the file has no code in it, and it is just driven by configuration, or more specifically in this case Markdown frontmatter, that is a set of configurations accepted by markdown files that help you set up your options such as title, description, og:image. We will describe frontmatter in more detail later in the article. Before we jump into modifying the configuration of the file, you should know that Vitepress has a very extensive and well-detailed documentation site where you can find help if you are stuck or would like to learn more. In this case, we are overriding the "home" page, so the documentation can be found here: Home Page Default Theme configuration. If you read the current file within the homepage, you will notice that it defines a "layout" of "home". This layout displays a main header with CTAs and a set of feature blocks. There are three different layouts available in the Default theme: "home", "doc" and "page". The title and description have already been set from the information we provided from the installation wizard. But the rest is just a basic boiler template. Let's see what we can change: 1) Add a hero image. This image can either be externally sourced or saved within the repository. ` 2) Update the action buttons. ` As shown above, Action buttons have two themes "brand" or "alt" and can accept internal or external links. Vitepress is clever enough to set the external links to open in a new tab and set the rel="noreferrer". 3) Change the feature blocks: Features blocks are great for engaging with the user and telling them what makes your site special. This accepts an icon and some text, so let's change ours with the following: ` The homepage is now completed and updated and it should look like this: Please note that what we did on the homepage is just changing the markdown front matter of the "home" layout. What this means is that if you want to, you can easily customise the page further by either adding more blocks to the layout file or actually by writing and styling the rest of the page as normal. Site configuration In this step, we are going learn about the main site configuration and how we can use it to customize our site. The configuration file can be found in the .vitepress folder under the name of "config.mjs". Just like the homepage layout, the configuration used in the preset file is self-explanatory: ` This file is very important and you are probably going to have it open at all times as it is going to be responsible for the layout of the sidebar navigations of your site. In this section, we are going to learn how to use the Vitepress configuration file to achieve the following: - Modify the sidebar navigation - Enable Search - Add Favicon to your site Modify the sidebar navigation The sidebar is the component displayed on the left-hand side of the blog pages. This is not automatically generated, but it is manually set in this file. You can have more than one navigation, so, for example, you could specify sidebar navigation that shows in pages that have "/blog/" within their path and another one for all markdown pages that have "/tutorials/". Let's see how to implement this: ` With the above code, there will be 2 different sidebars. One will just show if the URL includes "/blog" and the other will be displayed if the path includes "tutorials". Clicking on the above items will give a 404 error as we do not have any pages in that specific location. Still, we can easily fix the issue by creating the two folders "blog" and "tutorial" and creating the required files within these folders in our case are "index.md" and "one.md" for the blog and "index.md" and "two.md" for tutorials. The sidebar has further settings like the ability to create a nested tree or create collapsable menus. You can learn more by checking out the the official documentation on default theme sidebar. Enable Search No documentation or blog site is complete until a search is fully implemented on it. Luckily for us, enabling a site-wide search is extremely simple with Vitepress. Vitepress supports two different search types: a full-text search using minisearch and Algolia based search. In this tutorial, we are going to enable the full-text search. This is fully built-in and requires no external accounts. To enable search, we need to add a "Search" parameter within our themeConfig and set the provider to "local". We can add this right below the socialLinks. ` With just a simple config change, our site will now have a full site search working as shown below: The official search documentation has further information about the look and functionality of the search. Add Favicon to your site Even if the site configuration is very extensive, there are times when you will need to add something within the site-wise page that is not available. In this section we are going to learn how to add specific attributes to the of our site, and specifically how to add a favicon. To add custom values to the head, we are going to use the "head" properties available with the Vitepress configuration. The "head" configuration is an array that accepts an array with the element type (eg. link, script, meta), and an object including all the attributes for that specific element. So for example to replicate the following HTML: ` we would define the following head config: ` We can use this technique to set up metadata and even load fonts or Google Analytics. More info in the site-config head Writing your post In the last section of this article, we are going to learn how to actually write a blog post and also learn how to customize the pages with JS and styles. Writing your first page In the previous section, we created a couple of markdown files, but they are currently empty. Let's see how to create beautiful documentation using the built-in feature of Vitepress. In this section, we are going to work on the file stored in /blog/index.md. This file can be accessed in your browser by accessing "http://localhost:5174/blog/index.html". Blog Frontmatter Every file needs to have a frontmatter defined. This is used to define basic information on the page, such as the title, description, and more. For best SEO results, it is best practice to always define a title and description for a new page. We can do this by adding the following code at the top of our file: ` Frontmatter in Markdown files are delimited by the "---". In the above code, we set our title and description. Vitepress frontmatter supports further config like lastUpdates, sidebar, outline, and more. You can find info on the frontmatter-config documentation. Frontmatter has some global configuration, such as title and description, but also "layout specific" settings that are just available on specific layouts. This is clearly explained in the documentation. Blog Markdown Now that our post frontmatter is set, it is time to write the content of it. This is done using a very extensive markdown engine. Let's start with the basics and write a heading with some text and a link as shown below: ` After saving, our development environment will show the following results: Let's add a couple of headings and a table of contents to our document using [[toc]] to the top of our page: ` The above will produce an unordered list with all our links. The last feature that I want to share about the Vitepress markdown engine is the code editors. The markdown engine used in Vitepress offers extensive features when it comes to code rendering. Features available are "code highlight", "code focus", external snippets loading and much more. The full list of features can be found in the markdown docs. Let's implement a simple code snippet with a line of code focused. This can be achieved by adding "// [!code focus]" at the end of our row. Let's give it a try: ` The output of this will be: Customize your blog with Vue In this last section, we will learn how to customize our code by adding js logic, style, and external components. Before we begin, it is important to understand that when you use the default template of Vitepress, your pages are going to be rendered with Vue. This means that we can expand the individual page's functionality by rendering other vue components and/or writing logic and styles directly on the page. To better explain this concept, we are going to create a team page. Create a file called team.md within the root of our repository. This file will be accessible on "http://localhost:5174/team.html" and will be just a simple Markdown file. First, we set up the frontmatter as before. In this case, we have to specify an additional config called "layout". This will ensure the page has no style or components loaded such as sidebar or aside. ` Then we will have to create our team variable, just like a normal Vue component; we can do so by defining a script setup tag and defining the constant there. ` In the above code, we have imported the VPTeamMembers component from the vitepress/theme and defined an array of members. The values used in the members array are hardcoded, but as you may expect, you can load this information directly from an API. We now have to use the "members" variable within our file. We can do so by writing normal JavaScript. The markdown file will evaluate the JavaScript and render it, so in the following example it will render a specific component. ` Before we move forward we need to define some style as the page is unstyled since we have loaded the layout of "page". Just like we did with the tag, we can load a tag and update our styles: ` The completed file will look like this: ` The file above now includes: - A frontmatter that specifies a "page" layout - A script tag that loads an external component and defines a variable - Styles to make the page pretty - Markdown with a custom component The completed team page would render the following: Conclusion Vitepress is an extremely flexible static site generator. Its default theme provides you with everything you need to get started quickly. The ability to load external themes, enhance the current theme, and or write custom code within your page makes this tool extremely powerful. In future articles, we will discover what components are available within the Default Theme and see how you can make the most of your Vitepress site but keep on coding....

Dec 21, 2023

12 mins

VueViteVitepress

Understanding Vue's Reactive Data

Introduction Web development has always been about creating dynamic experiences. One of the biggest challenges developers face is managing how data changes over time and reflecting these changes in the UI promptly and accurately. This is where Vue.js, one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks, excels with its powerful reactive data system. In this article, we dig into the heart of Vue's reactivity system. We unravel how it perfectly syncs your application UI with the underlying data state, allowing for a seamless user experience. Whether new to Vue or looking to deepen your understanding, this guide will provide a clear and concise overview of Vue's reactivity, empowering you to build more efficient and responsive Vue 3 applications. So, let’s kick off and embark on this journey to decode Vue's reactive data system. What is Vue's Reactive Data? What does it mean for data to be ”'reactive”? In essence, when data is reactive, it means that every time the data changes, all parts of the UI that rely on this data automatically update to reflect these changes. This ensures that the user is always looking at the most current state of the application. At its core, Vue's Reactive Data is like a superpower for your application data. Think of it like a mirror - whatever changes you make in your data, the user interface (UI) reflects these changes instantly, like a mirror reflecting your image. This automatic update feature is what we refer to as “reactivity”. To visualize this concept, let's use an example of a simple Vue application displaying a message on the screen: ` In this application, 'message' is a piece of data that says 'Hello Vue!'. Let's say you change this message to 'Goodbye Vue!' later in your code, like when a button is clicked. ` With Vue's reactivity, when you change your data, the UI automatically updates to 'Goodbye Vue!' instead of 'Hello Vue!'. You don't have to write extra code to make this update happen - Vue's Reactive Data system takes care of it. How does it work? Let's keep the mirror example going. Vue's Reactive Data is the mirror that reflects your data changes in the UI. But how does this mirror know when and what to reflect? That's where Vue's underlying mechanism comes into play. Vue has a behind-the-scenes mechanism that helps it stay alerted to any changes in your data. When you create a reactive data object, Vue doesn't just leave it as it is. Instead, it sends this data object through a transformation process and wraps it up in a Proxy. Proxy objects are powerful and can detect when a property is changed, updated, or deleted. Let's use our previous example: ` Consider our “message” data as a book in a library. Vue places this book (our data) within a special book cover (the Proxy). This book cover is unique - it's embedded with a tracking device that notifies Vue every time someone reads the book (accesses the data) or annotates a page (changes the data). In our example, the reactive function creates a Proxy object that wraps around our state object. When you change the 'message': ` The Proxy notices this (like a built-in alarm going off) and alerts Vue that something has changed. Vue then updates the UI to reflect this change. Let’s look deeper into what Vue is doing for us and how it transforms our object into a Proxy object. You don't have to worry about creating or managing the Proxy; Vue handles everything. ` In the example above, we encapsulate our object, in this case, “state”, converting it into a Proxy object. Note that within the second argument of the Proxy, we have two methods: a getter and a setter. The getter method is straightforward: it merely returns the value, which in this instance is “state.message” equating to 'Hello Vue!' Meanwhile, the setter method comes into play when a new value is assigned, as in the case of “state.message = ‘Hey young padawan!’”. Here, “value” becomes our new 'Hey young padawan!', prompting the property to update. This action, in turn, triggers the reactivity system, which subsequently updates the DOM. Venturing Further into the Depths If you have been paying attention to our examples above, you might have noticed that inside the Proxy method, we call the functions track and trigger to run our reactivity. Let’s try to understand a bit more about them. You see, Vue 3 reactivity data is more about Proxy objects. Let’s create a new example: ` In this example, when you click on the button, the message's value changes. This change triggers the effect function to run, as it's actively listening for any changes in its dependencies. How does the effect property know when to be called? Vue 3 has three main functions to run our reactivity: effect, track, and trigger. The effect function is like our supervisor. It steps in and takes action when our data changes – similar to our effect method, we will dive in more later. Next, we have the track function. It notes down all the important data we need to keep an eye on. In our case, this data would be state.message. Lastly, we've got the trigger function. This one is like our alarm bell. It alerts the effect function whenever our important data (the stuff track is keeping an eye on) changes. In this way, trigger, track, and effect work together to keep our Vue application reacting smoothly to changes in data. Let’s go back to them: ` Tracking (Dependency Collection) Tracking is the process of registering dependencies between reactive objects and the effects that depend on them. When a reactive property is read, it's "tracked" as a dependency of the current running effect. When we execute track(), we essentially store our effects in a Set object. But what exactly is an "effect"? If we revisit our previous example, we see that the effect method must be run whenever any property changes. This action — running the effect method in response to property changes — is what we refer to as an "Effect"! (computed property, watcher, etc.) > Note: We'll outline a basic, high-level overview of what might happen under the hood. Please note that the actual implementation is more complex and optimized, but this should give you an idea of how it works. Let’s see how it works! In our example, we have the following reactive object: ` We need a way to reference the reactive object with its effects. For that, we use a WeakMap. Which type is going to look something like this: ` We are using a WeakMap to set our object state as the target (or key). In the Vue code, they call this object targetMap. Within this targetMap object, our value is an object named depMap of Map type. Here, the keys represent our properties (in our case, that would be message and showSword), and the values correspond to their effects – remember, they are stored in a Set that in Vue 3 we refer to as dep. Huh… It might seem a bit complex, right? Let's make it more straightforward with a visual example: With the above explained, let’s see what this Track method kind of looks like and how it uses this targetMap. This method essentially is doing something like this: ` At this point, you have to be wondering, how does Vue 3 know what activeEffect should run? Vue 3 keeps track of the currently running effect by using a global variable. When an effect is executed, Vue temporarily stores a reference to it in this global variable, allowing the track function to access the currently running effect and associate it with the accessed reactive property. This global variable is called inside Vue as activeEffect. Vue 3 knows which effect is assigned to this global variable by wrapping the effects functions in a method that invokes the effect whenever a dependency changes. And yes, you guessed, that method is our effect method. ` This method behind the scenes is doing something similar to this: ` The handling of activeEffect within Vue's reactivity system is a dance of careful timing, scoping, and context preservation. Let’s go step by step on how this is working all together. When we run our Effect method for the first time, we call the get trap of the Proxy. ` When running the get trap, we have our activeEffect so we can store it as a dependency. ` This coordination ensures that when a reactive property is accessed within an effect, the track function knows which effect is responsible for that access. Trigger Method Our last method makes this Reactive system to be complete. The trigger method looks up the dependencies for the given target and key and re-runs all dependent effects. ` Conclusion Diving into Vue 3's reactivity system has been like unlocking a hidden superpower in my web development toolkit, and honestly, I've had a blast learning about it. From the rudimentary elements of reactive data and instantaneous UI updates to the intricate details involving Proxies, track and trigger functions, and effects, Vue 3's reactivity is an impressively robust framework for building dynamic and responsive applications. In our journey through Vue 3's reactivity, we've uncovered how this framework ensures real-time and precise updates to the UI. We've delved into the use of Proxies to intercept and monitor variable changes and dissected the roles of track and trigger functions, along with the 'effect' method, in facilitating seamless UI updates. Along the way, we've also discovered how Vue ingeniously manages data dependencies through sophisticated data structures like WeakMaps and Sets, offering us a glimpse into its efficient approach to change detection and UI rendering. Whether you're just starting with Vue 3 or an experienced developer looking to level up, understanding this reactivity system is a game-changer. It doesn't just streamline the development process; it enables you to create more interactive, scalable, and maintainable applications. I love Vue 3, and mastering its reactivity system has been enlightening and fun. Thanks for reading, and as always, happy coding!...

Nov 22, 2023

7 mins

VueJavaScriptTypeScriptWeb Development

Building Web Components with Vue 3.2

Introduction Have you ever worked across multiple projects, and wanted a set of custom components you could just leverage across all of them? Whether for a job or just for side projects, having a suite of components you can reach for is an excellent way to get going faster in a new or existing project. But what if not all of your projects are using the same UI framework? Or, what if you have one that isn't using any JavaScript framework at all, and is completely server-rendered? As a Vue developer, ideally we would like to just use our framework of choice to build complex user interfaces. But sometimes we find ourselves in the above situation, working with another JavaScript framework such as React or Angular, or using a backend rendering system like Rails or Laravel. How can we build a reusable UI across these various frontend options? In Vue 3.2, we now have a solution to this problem: Web Components, powered by Vue! Web Components According to MDN, "Web Components is a suite of different technologies allowing you to create reusable custom elements — with their functionality encapsulated away from the rest of your code — and utilize them in your web apps." Consider a few existing elements in HTML, such as select or video. These interactive elements contain their own basic styling (typically provided by the browser), some internal logic, and a way to listen to events. Web Components allow developers to build their own elements, and reference them in their HTML - no framework required. Here's a very basic web component example of a component that would display the current time. ` Once a custom Web Component has been defined, they can be rendered as part of the DOM, just like any standard HTML element. We can use this element in our HTML like this: ` We can also use custom attributes with these elements, allowing us to pass data into them (similar to props in Vue). Note that objects cannot be passed in as attributes, because that is a JavaScript concept, not an HTML feature. ` While we could write this logic pretty easily in a script tag using vanilla JavaScript, utilizing Web Components gives us the ability to encapsulate specific logic and functionality within the component, thus keeping our code more organized and understandable. This is the same reason we utilize component frameworks like Vue and React. Also, as we discussed earlier, Web Components are flexible in that they can be used without a JS framework, but are also compatible with modern frameworks (React and Vue both other support for using Web Components). Vue-Powered Web Components Vue 3.2 includes built-in support for defining custom Web Components while utilzing the Vue API. In this way, we get the best of both worlds - custom, reusable components across frameworks/interfaces, plus the excellent API of Vue. Let's take our example of getting the current time, and translate that into a Vue component. We will be using , which is the recommended way to write Vue single-file components today. To start, let's create our new file, CurrentTime.ce.vue (ce in this case stands for custom element). ` Great, our component is doing exactly what we were doing before. Next, we need to import this into our main Javascript somewhere, and define it as a custom element. ` What did we do here? 1. First, we import Vue's defineCustomElement function, which converts a Vue component into a custom element. 2. We then import our Vue SFC, and pass it into defineCustomElement, generating the constructor required for the web components APIs. 3. Then, we define the custom element in the DOM, supplying it with the tag that we want to use (current-time) and the constructor it should use to render. With that, our Vue web component can now be rendered in our app! And since web components work in all modern frameworks (as well as non-JS frameworks like Ruby on Rails or Laravel), we can now build out a suite of web components for our application using Vue, and then utlize them in any frontend we want. Here's a basic example using vanilla JS, and the default Vite template: ` You can see a working example of this on Stackblitz. More Features Creating a basic Vue component isn't always what you want to do, though. What happens if we need to utilize props or events? Fortunately, Vue has us covered here as well. Let's explore some of the basic functions we'd expect from our custom Vue components. Props The first thing we want to do is pass in props to our web component. Using our component, we want to be able to set the time zone. For this case, we can use props as we normally would for an HTML element. In our HTML template, let's change our code to the following: ` If you save your file now, you will probably get an error in your console like this one: ` This is because our prop isn't defined in the component yet. Let's take care of that now. Go back to your Vue component, and make the following changes: ` In our Vue component, we are now defining props (using Vue 3.2's defineProps helper, which we do not need to import), then using the timeZone prop to translate the date into the correct time zone string. Nice! Save your files, and our app should work again as expected, but this time, it will display the date in a different time zone. Feel free to play around with it a bit, trying out some different time zones. By default, Vue will translate props into their defined types. Since HTML only allows strings to be passed in as attributes, Vue is handling the translation to different types for us. Events From the docs: "Events emitted via this.$emit or setup emit are dispatched as native CustomEvents on the custom element. Additional event arguments (payload) will be exposed as an array on the CustomEvent object as its details property." Let's add a basic emit from our component that will trigger a console.log. In our Vue component, update our script block to the following: ` The main change we're making here is to add defineEmits (also available without import, similar to defineProps) in order to define what events this component makes. We then begin to use this in our setInterval step, to emit the new date as an event. In our main.js, we'll now add the event listener to our web component. ` With this, whenever the first component emits a datechange event, we will be able to listen for it, and act accordingly. Nice! Slots Slots are used exactly as expected within Vue, including named slots. Scoped slots, as they are an advanced feature within a full Vue application, are not supported. Also, when utilizing named slots in your application, you will need to use the native slot syntax, rather than Vue's specific slot syntax. Let's give this a try now. In you Vue component, change your template to the following: ` For this example, we are using a standard slot (we'll get back to named slots later). Now, in your HTML, add some text in between the tags: ` If you save and reload your page, you should now see that your text (or whatever content you want) is correctly passing into your web component. Now, let's do the same thing using named slots. Change your Vue component to have a named slot (`, for example), and your HTML like this: ` The result should be the same! And now we can use named slots in our web components. Styles One of the great parts about web components is that they can utilize a shadow root, an encapsulated portion of the DOM that contains their own styling information. This feature is available to our Vue web components as well. When you name your file with the .ce.vue extension, it defaults to having inline styles. This is perfect if you want to use your components as a library in an application. Provide/Inject Provide and inject also work as expected within Vue web components. One thing to keep in mind, however, is that they only can pass data to other Vue web components. From the docs, "a Vue-defined custom element won't be able to inject properties provided by a non-custom-element Vue component." Conclusion Vue 3.2 provides the ability to write custom web components using Vue's familiar syntax, and the flexibility of the Composition API. Keep in mind, however, that this is not the recommended approach to writing Vue applications, or application development in general. The documentation goes to great lengths to explain the differences between web components and Vue-specific components, and why the Vue team feels their approach is preferable for web development. However, web components are still an amazing technology for building cross-framework applications. Plenty of tools exist in the web development ecosystem focused purely on web components, such as Lit or Ionic. While this may not be the recommended approach to building applications with Vue, it can provide an encapsulated way to get certain features developed and functional across teams or projects. Regardless of your stance on web components, I highly encourage you to check out this new feature of Vue and experiment with it yourself. You could even try mounting your component in React or Svelte, and see how easy it is to work with across JavaScript frameworks. Most important of all, remember that the development ecosystem is always improving and growing, and it's up to you to be ready to grow with it. StackBlitz Demo Play around with the StackBlitz demo below and here's an example of a Vue web component I am utilizing in a side project I'm working on. Have fun!...

Oct 5, 2021

7 mins

VueJavaScriptWeb Development

Understanding Vue.js's <Suspense> and Async Components

In this blog post, we will delve into how and async components work, their benefits, and practical implementation strategies to make your Vue.js applications more efficient and user-friendly. Without further ado, let’s get started! Suspense Let's kick off by explaining what Suspense components are. They are a new component that helps manage how your application handles components that need to await for some async resource to resolve, like fetching data from a server, waiting for images to load, or any other task that might take some time to complete before they can be properly rendered. Imagine you're building a web page that needs to load data from a server, and you have 2 components that fetch the data you need as they will show different things. Typically, you might see a loading spinner or a skeleton while the data is being fetched. Suspense components make it easier to handle these scenarios. Instead of manually managing loading states and error messages for each component that needs to fetch data, Suspense components let you wrap all these components together. Inside this wrapper, you can define: 1. What to show while the data is loading (like a loading spinner). 2. The actual content that should be displayed once the data is successfully fetched. This way, Vue Suspense simplifies the process of handling asynchronous operations (like data fetching) and improves the user (and the developer) experience by providing a more seamless and integrated way to show loading states and handle errors. There are two types of async dependencies that can wait on: - Components with an async setup() hook. This includes components using with top-level await expressions. *Note: These can only be used within a component.* - Async Components. Async components Vue's asynchronous components are like a smart loading system for your web app. Imagine your app as a big puzzle. Normally, you'd put together all the pieces at once, which can take time. But what if some pieces aren't needed right away? Asynchronous components help with this. Here's how they work: - Load Only What's Needed: Just like only picking up puzzle pieces you need right now, asynchronous components let your app load only the parts that are immediately necessary. Other parts can be loaded later, as needed. - Faster Start: Your app starts up faster because it doesn't have to load everything at once. It's like quickly starting with the border of a puzzle and filling in the rest later. - Save Resources: It uses your web resources (like internet data) more wisely, only grabbing what’s essential when it's essential. In short, asynchronous components make your app quicker to start and more efficient, improving the overall experience for your users. Example: ` Combining Async Components and Suspense Let's explore how combining asynchronous components with Vue's Suspense feature can enhance your application. When asynchronous components are used with Vue's Suspense, they form a powerful combination. The key point is that async components are "suspensable" by default. This means they can be easily integrated with Suspense to improve how your app handles loading and rendering components. When used together, you can do the following things: - Centralized Loading and Error Handling: With Suspense, you don't have to handle loading and error states individually for each async component. Instead, you can define a single loading indicator or error message within the Suspense component. This unified approach simplifies your code and ensures consistency across different parts of your app. - Flexible and Clean Code Structure: By combining async components with Suspense, your code becomes more organized and easier to maintain. An asynchronous component has the flexibility to operate independently of Suspense's oversight. By setting suspensible: false in its options, the component takes charge of its own loading behavior. This means that instead of relying on Suspense to manage when it appears, the component itself dictates its loading state and presentation. This option is particularly useful for components that have specific loading logic or visuals they need to maintain, separate from the broader Suspense-driven loading strategy in the application. In practice, this combo allows you to create a user interface that feels responsive and cohesive. Users see a well-timed loading indicator while the necessary components are being fetched, and if something goes wrong, a single, well-crafted error message is displayed. It's like ensuring that the entire puzzle is either revealed in its completed form or not at all rather than showing disjointed parts at different times. How it works When a component inside the boundary is waiting for something asynchronous, shows fallback content. This fallback content can be anything you choose, such as a loading spinner or a message indicating that data is being loaded. Example Usage Let’s use a simple example: In the visual example provided, imagine we have two Vue components: one showcasing a selected Pokémon, Eevee, and a carousel showcasing a variety of other Pokémon. Both components are designed to fetch data asynchronously. Without , while the data is being fetched, we would typically see two separate loading indicators: one for the Eevee Pokemon that is selected and another for the carousel. This can make the page look disjointed and be a less-than-ideal user experience. We could display a single, cohesive loading indicator by wrapping both components inside a boundary. This unified loading state would persist until all the data for both components—the single Pokémon display and the carousel—has been fetched and is ready to be rendered. Here's how you might structure the code for such a scenario: ` Here, is the component that's performing asynchronous operations. While loading, the text 'Loading...' is displayed to the user. Great! But what about when things don't go as planned and an error occurs? Currently, Vue's doesn't directly handle errors within its boundary. However, there's a neat workaround. You can use the onErrorCaptured() hook in the parent component of to catch and manage errors. Here's how it works: ` If we run this code, and let’s say that we had an error selecting our Pokemon, this is how it is going to display to the user: The error message is specifically tied to the component where the issue occurred, ensuring that it's the only part of your application that shows an error notification. Meanwhile, the rest of your components will continue to operate and display as intended, maintaining the overall user experience without widespread disruption. This targeted error handling keeps the application's functionality intact while indicating where the problem lies. Conclusion stands out as a formidable feature in Vue.js, transforming the management of asynchronous operations into a more streamlined and user-centric process. It not only elevates the user experience by ensuring smoother interactions during data loading phases but also enhances code maintainability and application performance. I hope you found this blog post enlightening and that it adds value to your Vue.js projects. As always, happy coding and continue to explore the vast possibilities Vue.js offers to make your applications more efficient and engaging!...

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VueWeb PerformanceUXJavaScript

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