Nuxt.js is a popular framework aimed at simplifying your Vue JS development by offering server-side rendering, file system routing, modules and much more. Our team has extensive experience in leveraging the framework capabilities by being part of the Nuxt.js community to stay up to date with the latest features and modules, so that you do not have to.
We understand that building web applications can be a challenging task, especially when it comes to developing large-scale applications that require performance, maintainability, and scalability.
Our Nuxt.js development services aim to provide clients with robust and scalable web applications that meet their unique business requirements using the latest techniques. No matter if you are just starting, improving an existing app or migrating from a different version or framework, our team is able to help.
Our clients are building for the future. Explore This Dot Labs' portfolio, and see how we have helped them achieve their diverse technical goals.
Our clients are building for the future. Explore This Dot Labs' portfolio, and see how we have helped them achieve their diverse technical goals.
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Starter.dev is an open-source community resource developed by This Dot Labs that provides code starter kits in a variety of web technologies, including React, Angular, Vue, and more to come.
topics covered in this case study:
Framework.dev is a resource for developers looking to search, compare, and discover libraries and resources for a specific technology.
Nuxt DevTools v1.0 is a game-changer for web developers, featuring integrated VS Code, real-time views, and a customizable UI. This new toolset enhances efficiency, revolutionizing web development....
Dec 1, 2023
8 mins
Introduction The quest for an optimal web application involves numerous factors, such as performance, user experience, and search engine optimization (SEO). Nuxt 3 provides excellent features out-of-the-box that can help you tackle these aspects efficiently. This article will guide you in creating a Nuxt 3 application using Server Side Rendering (SSR) and pre-rendering capabilities. We'll craft an application that offers a seamless user experience, superior performance, and improved SEO. Server Side Rendering in Nuxt 3 Enhancing User Experience and SEO with SSR In the world of web development, Server Side Rendering (SSR) has gained significant traction. It refers to the server rendering the webpage upon each request rather than the client. With SSR, your web page arrives fully formed at the client's doorstep, reducing the time for the first painting. The advantage of SSR extends beyond just performance and user experience. It's also a darling of search engine crawlers, which find it easier to index your website with fully formed page content at the time of their crawl. In simple terms, it's like providing a tour guide to lead the search engine around your website, ensuring they get all the spots! The Power of SSR in Nuxt 3 Nuxt 3 has built-in support for SSR by default. It allows you to optimize your application by loading the data before rendering the page. To take advantage of SSR, you simply build your application as you usually would. In this case, using the fetch() method to load some. ` In this example, the fetchData function fetches the data before rendering the page. The data then gets displayed within the tag. Sidenote, if you wanted to disable SSR in your Nuxt application, you would do so in your nuxt.config.ts file: `` More details on how this works can be found in the rendering modes section in the official Nuxt 3 documentation. Pre-rendering in Nuxt 3 Amplifying Application Performance with Pre-rendering While SSR has its advantages, another superhero in our story is pre-rendering. Pre-rendering refers to the process of generating the static HTML pages of a site in advance. It's like preparing a feast before the guests arrive so you can serve them promptly. Like SSR, pre-rendering enhances SEO, as search engines can index fully rendered pages. Especially for content-heavy applications, pre-rendering can give a turbo boost to performance, leading to better user engagement and retention. Leverage Pre-rendering with Nuxt 3 Nuxt 3 supports SSR and Static Site Generation (SSG), including pre-rendering. To enable prerendering, you need to export your routes in nuxt.config.ts: ` These routes will be pre-rendered during the build phase, allowing for swift navigation. Let's update our application to pre-render the users' list: ` In the nuxt.config.ts, include the users' route for pre-rendering: ` Going beyond with Nuxt 3 While SSR and pre-rendering are significant for performance and SEO, Nuxt 3 offers more advanced features like hot module replacement, Vue 3 integration, improved error handling, and more. Nuxt 3 also has different kinds of rendering modes for different applications; in our SSR case, we used the default Universal rendering mode. Leveraging these features allows you to develop robust, high-performance, and user-friendly applications. Conclusion In this article, we delved into the concepts of SSR and pre-rendering in Nuxt 3. We explored how these techniques contribute to enhancing performance, user experience, and SEO. You can create exceptional web applications by integrating Vue 3's capabilities with Nuxt 3's robust features. A well-structured, performant, and SEO-friendly application not only attract users but also retains them. Embrace the power of Nuxt 3 and Vue 3 in your development journey. Happy coding!...
Aug 2, 2023
3 mins
We're thrilled to unveil our brand new starter.dev kit: a Nuxt 3 kit using Pinia as the state manager and Vuetify for styles. While Nuxt 2 is still reliable and powerful, Nuxt 3, being the latest iteration of this versatile framework, brings an array of innovative features and enhanced flexibility that make it an ideal choice for your next development project. Now, let's explore what this kit offers, and how it can help you in your upcoming application development. Nuxt 3 vs Nuxt 2 First, why Nuxt 3? Let's delve into what Nuxt 3 is and why we've opted for this technology for our kit. Nuxt 3 is a modern web development framework based on Vue 3 for building server-side rendered applications, single-page applications, or statically rendered websites. It's an evolution of Nuxt 2 and provides an improved developer experience and better performance. Let’s see what features it has to offer in comparison to Nuxt 2! - Built on Vue 3: Nuxt 3 is built from the ground up using Vue 3, which brings a host of new features including conditional suspending of component rendering via the Suspense API, more flexibility for global mounting, and a Virtual DOM rewrite for better performance and improved TypeScript support. - Nitro Engine: Nitro, the new rendering server for Nuxt 3, is built for serverless architectures and offers extremely fast cold-start times. Nuxt 3 is planned to support Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) using the Nitro renderer. - Native Composition API Support: Nuxt 3 has native support for the Vue Composition API, a feature that Nuxt 2 had to rely on an external library to use. The Composition API changes how code is written in Vue and is now built-in with Nuxt 3 since it is built on top of Vue 3. - Faster Hot Reloads with Vite: Nuxt 3 uses Vite for Hot Module Replacement (HMR), which is used when the server re-renders the updated components of your application in both development and production. This leads to faster hot reloads. - Additional Features: There are several other salient features of Nuxt 3, including a new Nuxt CLI (nuxi), NuxtJS Dev tools, and global auto imports of common functions such as `. Nuxt 3 brings remarkable performance enhancements, significantly reducing the size of server deployments and client bundles. These improvements are made possible by implementing a new renderer, faster hot reloads, and built-in support for native TypeScript and Composition API, as mentioned earlier. With such impressive features at our disposal, the decision to choose this framework was undoubtedly the right one. Pinia Let's talk about the state management library we've chosen. As the successor to Vuex, Pinia is now the default state management library for Vue 3. Pinia shines when sharing global state within your application; it ensures security and ease of use, especially when using SSR, which is often the case with Nuxt. Pinia's integration with Nuxt 3 is seamless, benefiting from Vue 3's inbuilt Composition API. The use of Pinia greatly simplifies the state management in Vue-based applications. Vuetify Vuetify is an exceptional Material Design framework for Vue.js that assists in building elegant, responsive, and interactive web applications. In Nuxt 3, the integration of Vuetify can be done smoothly, thanks to Nuxt's flexibility. This makes the process of building modern, visually appealing applications more efficient and enjoyable. What's inside the Nuxt 3 Kit? Our aim in developing the starter.dev kit is to equip you with essentials while maintaining flexibility. The kit incorporates a counter component that manages state using a Pinia store, and a Fetch component showcasing data fetch in Nuxt 3. We decided to omit Storybook and testing from this starter.dev kit. Storybook is currently incompatible with Nuxt 3, but rest assured, we will incorporate it as soon as compatibility support is introduced. Regarding testing, tools like Vitest and others have been excluded for now. The current Nuxt 3 testing landscape is still under development and not deemed production-ready. As the testing environment matures, we will update our starter.dev kit to include the most efficient and reliable testing solutions. Furthermore, the kit includes configurations for ESLint, Prettier, and is written entirely in TypeScript. This saves you significant time by taking the hassle out of setting up these tools in a new project. How do I use the kit? Use our starter.dev CLI! This is by far the easiest method. Simply run the command ` This will display a list of available starter.dev kits. Select the one that fits your needs - in this case, the ` one! You'll be asked to provide a name for your new project, and once that's inputted, the CLI will begin preparing the kit for you! Once installed, you can cd into your new project directory with the name you provided earlier, and start coding. But don’t forget to install the required dependencies with your package manager of choice (I recommend pnpm 🫣). For a deeper insight into the kit, visit https://starter.dev/kits/nuxt3-pinia-vuetify/ where you can read the README.md file for more detailed documentation, as well as take a look at the source code. Don't forget to read the package.json file to see the scripts available for the kit. Conclusion In a nutshell, our new starter.dev kit integrates Nuxt 3, Pinia, and Vuetify.. This article not only introduces you to the kit but also delves into the features and advantages that make it stand out - the improved performance of Nuxt 3, the ease of state management with Pinia, and the sophisticated stylings of Vuetify. As the digital landscape evolves, we will keep this kit updated with tools like Storybook and comprehensive testing capabilities as soon as they become Nuxt 3-compatible. That's it, folks! We're eager for you to take this kit for a spin in your next project. We've built it with much care and attention to detail, ensuring it brings significant value to your development process. We hope you find it as enjoyable to use as we did creating it. Happy coding!...
Jul 24, 2023
5 mins
*Starter.dev is an open source community resource developed by This Dot Labs that provides code starter kits in a variety of web technologies, including React, Angular, Vue, etc. with the hope of enabling developers to bootstrap their projects quickly without having to spend time configuring tooling. We ship starter kits with showcases to demonstrate how to best utilize these kits, and structure more complex projects.* --- We are excited to announce our new starter.dev kit: a Nuxt 2 kit with Pinia as the state manager, and Tailwind for the styling. Ok, you might be thinking: "Why should I use a Nuxt 2 kit if Nuxt 3 is just around the corner?" Well, although Nuxt 2 is indeed in just maintenance mode by now, it is the most stable Nuxt version out there, and it is still really powerful, and a great framework for you next app. If you want to build a scalable and stable project, you might want to build it in this version! Ok, without any further ado, let’s see what this kit is all about, and how you can use it in your next application! Lets first talk about our technological options. Nuxt So why Nuxt.js? Lets kick off explaining what Nuxt.js actually is, and why we decided to create a kit with this technology. Nuxt is a framework built on top of Vue. It helps you handle complex configuration with an easy command-line setup, such as asynchronous routing with middlewares, great SEO using SSR, automatic code-splitting, auto imports and many more. It also brings its own features, such as build-in components, different ways for getting data from an API, 2 rendering methods (Server-side or Static sites), and even its own loader, transitions, and animations. At first, you might find Nuxt a bit challenging. For example, if you have never used SSR before, it takes time to get used to it, and you will have to change your mindset from Vue as they handle logic quite differently. But we think all that effort will be worth it, because we think Nuxt is a great framework for your next application. It can make your development experience more gratifying and faster, and your site more SEO friendly. Pinia Lets now dive in into the state management library that we choose. As stated from the previous official library Vuex, Pinia is now the default state management library for Vue. When sharing global state within your application, you want it to be secure and easy to use, especially if you are using SSR as we are more likely doing with Nuxt. Pinia is pretty good at helping us with those matters. Using Pinia with Nuxt 2 is a bit tricky but nothing crazy. You just need to install an extra package in order to use Composition-API inside Nuxt 2, make some config adjustments, and then you are good to go! Tailwind Tailwind is a great utility-first CSS framework that helps you build websites more quickly. Nuxt helps us set up Tailwind from scratch pretty easily when creating our project from the command-line. It does the config setups, and also installs the packages we need in order to start using it. What’s inside the Nuxt 2 Kit? Our main goal when creating a starter.dev kit is to provide the essential things for your project without adding too much configuration to make them as flexible as possible. The kit includes two main components. The first one is a counter component, managing the state with a Pinia store and a Fetch component showing how data can be fetched inside Nuxt 2. Both of these components have their own Storybook component, and a test component written with testing library and MSW. These are basic examples to demonstrate how you can utilize these technologies together. The kit also includes ESlint, Prettier and Husky basic configurations. Also, the whole kit is written in TypeScript, which includes configuration within the kit as well. Our goal here is to save you all that time that it would take to get all these tools configured properly when starting a new project. How do I use the kit? With our starter.dev CLI! Of course there are other methods, but this one is for sure the easiest one. Just run the command npx @this-dot/create-starter. After running this command, a list of available starter.dev kits will show up. Of course you can select the best one that fits your needs. In this case, it will be the nuxt2-pinia-tailwind one! It will ask for the name of your new project, and once that is written down, the CLI will start to prepare the kit for you! Now that the kit is installed, you can cd into your new project directory with the name you provided before, and then start coding! Oh, but don’t forget to install the dependencies needed with your package manager of choice (I recommend pnpm 🫣). Take a look at https://starter.dev/kits/nuxt2-pinia-tailwind/ so you can have a deeper view of the kit! Where you can read the README.md file for more detailed documentation, as well as looking at the source code, don't forget to read the package.json file to see the scripts available for the kit. Happy coding!...
Dec 14, 2022
4 mins
Nuxt is an open source framework to make your Vue.js applications. Currently, Nuxt 3 has a release candidate and the stable version would be out soon. In this series, I would be taking us through Nuxt 3 concepts and APIs. In this first part, we would focus on rendering modes in Nuxt 3. Setup To quickly install Nuxt 3, lets use the nuxt 3 documentation. Rendering modes Nuxt 3 offers a couple of different rendering modes: - Universal Rendering - Client-side rendering - Hybrid rendering Each of this rendering modes have their use cases and benefits. In this article, we will take a look at their pros, and how to implement them in Nuxt 3. Universal Rendering Universal rendering allows for code to be pre-rendered at build time or rendered on the server before it is served to the client on request. This results in very fast pages, because rendering on the server is faster and the user gets content on page load compared to Client-Side only rendering. Nuxt 3 also improves this greatly by allowing code to be rendered not just on node-js servers, but also on CDN edge workers. This increases the site speed, and also helps reduces cost. In Universal rendering, we can use pre-rendering. This means we can have some pages, or all pages, pre-rendered on build time, and other pages rendered at request time. This is a great choice for static pages like website landing pages, blogs and some dynamic pages that don’t change often and have a finite number of pages. Universal mode with server side rendering is best for sites with highly dynamic content that changes frequently, like ecommerce sites. Pros Search Engine Optimization: Universal rendered apps serve the page with the generated html content to the browser. This makes it easy for web crawlers to index such pages. Performance: The performance of Universal rendered apps are fast compared to Client-side rendered apps because the page already contains the HTML code, and this does not rely on the users device to parse and render the HTML. To deploy and use our Nuxt 3 application on a node-server in universal mode: First in nuxt.config.js file ` By default, SSR is set to true if it is not passed in the nuxt.config.js file. Also, preset is set to ‘node-server’ by default, but this can be changed to suit the deployment environment. For example, Vercel preset should be used for Vercel deployment. You can read here for available deployment presets. When we run our build command: ` This will generate the output folder with the app's entry point file. Next, we can run the file with Node. ` or ` To deploy and use our Nuxt 3 application on a static server in universal mode: First, in our nuxt.config.js file, we specify the pages to be generated: ` Now we can run our generate command: ` This will generate the output folder '.output/public' with the pages files and the related JS and CSS files. We can simply place this folder into any static hosting service, and access our application. To generate our routes async, like a blog website, we can fetch our routes and then pass it to the route during build with this hook. ` Client side rendering Client side rendering involves sending every request to a single file, usually ‘index.html’, with empty content and then linking them to the corresponding JS bundles, allowing the browser perform the parsing and rendering of the HTML. Client side rendering is a great choice for heavily interactive websites with animations, like online gaming sites, Saas sites, etc. Pros Offline support: Client-side rendered apps can run offline once the dependent JavaScript files are downloaded if there is no internet. It is easy to make a client side rendered app a Progressive web app. Cheap: Client-side rendered apps are the cheapest in terms of hosting as you do not need to run a server. They are made up of HTML and JS files which can be served from a static server. To config our Nuxt 3 app to be fully client side rendered: First in nuxt.config.js file ` Now we can run our generate command: ` This will generate the output folder '.output/public/index.html' with the apps entry point file and the related js files. We can simply place this folder onto any static hosting service, and access our application. Hybrid rendering Hybrid rendering is an unreleased Nuxt 3 feature that allows developers to configure different rendering modes for different pages. This should be available later this year, and we will explore it in this series once it is. For more official information about the hybrid rendering discussion. In the next article, we will implement a simple webpage using the universal rendering. The webpage will have a blog which will be prerendered, and also a dynamic user page which will be server rendered. --- I hope this article has been helpful to you. If you encounter any issues, you can reach out to me on Twitter or Github....
Oct 24, 2022
4 mins
Introduction SASS makes working on large projects more organized. It allows you to use variables, nested rules, mixins, and functions. The preferred styling method in Nuxt is component file styling, and integrating SASS into your project can make your component file styling appear more understandable. How to Import SASS in Nuxt To add SASS after setting up your Nuxt application, we will first install SASS and sass-loader. Let's run either of these commands depending on our package manager. ` Component File Styling With SASS and sass-loader installed in our project, we can now write SCSS in our component file. Lets see an example: ` In the example above, all we need to specify is lang="scss" on the style tag, and we can now write scss in that component. Global File Import and Variables To import SCSS files that are global, like variables and mixins files, we need to install style-resources: ` Next, we can update our nuxt.config.js file by adding the module we just installed to the buildModules. ` Next, let's create a global variables.scss file in our assets/style folder. Add a single variable inside: ` Next, we need to import this file inside the nuxt.config file: ` Now we have the variables in our variables.scss available in all our components for use. Next, let's test it out by updating our button component. ` We have updated our button variant color to be our global SCSS variable ($primary and $white). Mixins Mixins in SASS are used to write styles that can be reused in other parts of the code. Let's create a sample mixin to center an item. ` Next, we need to import our mixin in Nuxt config: ` Now, let's update our button component with our mixin: ` Functions Functions in SASS are used to write complex operations or behaviours that can be reused in other parts of the code. Let's create a function to handle a media query for our application. ` This is a basic example of what a function can be used for. More complex cases, like calculating percentage, can also be done. Let's import our mixin in Nuxt config: ` Let's update our button component with our function: ` We have been able to add SASS to our Nuxt project, and also looked at some ways in which SASS can make our codebase look cleaner. I hope this article has been helpful to you. If you encounter any issues, you can reach out to me on Twitter or Github....
Aug 17, 2022
2 mins
