Book Image

Vue.js Quick Start Guide

By : Ajdin Imsirovic
Book Image

Vue.js Quick Start Guide

By: Ajdin Imsirovic

Overview of this book

Vue.js is the latest trending frontend framework. Simplicity, reactivity, and ?exibility are some of the key benefits that Vue offers to developers. This book will help you learn everything you need to know to build stunning reactive web apps with Vue.js 2 quickly and easily. This book will take you through the Vue 2 framework. You will start by learning the different Vue installation options: CDN, NPM, and Vue CLI. Then we will look at the core concepts of Vue: templates and components – ways to modularize Vue code. You will learn how to utilize directives, which are Vue-specific HTML attributes with additional features. Also, you will see how Vue uses a streamlined approach to development, with reusable methods, computed properties, and watchers, and how it controls state with the help of its data option. You will learn about the concepts of reactive programming in Vue, and how to understand communication between parent and child components. We will take a look at props and slots, working with CSS, filters, and mixins. We will also look at ways to add transitions and animations to Vue apps. Then you will extend Vue by building custom directives and your own plugins. Finally, you will learn about Vuex – a Vue plugin that allows us to centralize state, and also introduce Nuxt, which is a framework that builds on top of Vue and solves some issues of single-page applications. After learning about these components, you will be ready to build your own reactive web apps with Vue.js 2.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

Preface

Up until a few years ago, direct DOM manipulation was the standard in frontend development, with jQuery leading the way. All that started changing with the popularization of modern JavaScript libraries and frameworks, mainly Angular and React. And then, in February of 2014, Vue came out with its initial release. 

With large IT companies backing both Angular and React, it was not clear how Vue would carve out its position. Initially developed by a single developer, Evan You, in four short years—and without corporate backing—Vue went from being the fun little project of a single developer to an unlikely rival to the big boys, with over 300 contributors. It's not a one-man show anymore.

Today, Vue is used by NASA, GitLab, Alibaba, Grammarly, WizzAir, EuroNews, Xiaomi, Adobe, Behance, Nintendo, Chess.com, and many others.

Conclusion? Vue is here to stay. And while there might be an on-going discussion about whether it's better to learn Elm, or React, or Angular, or Ember, or something entirely different, this discussion is largely irrelevant. Each library and framework has something to offer, and in the end, it's simply a matter of trying it out and seeing whether it works for you.

We developers need to embrace the necessity to surf the technology wave and accept that learning new frameworks and paradigms is simply a part of our careers. Therefore, the question is not whether we should learn Vue, or any other battle-tested and proven tech out there.

Vue has already achieved its ranking, and it's playing in the same league with the big boys. The only question is, How do I learn it efficiently? and this book is an attempt to answer that question.

Who this book is for

This book is aimed at beginner-to-intermediate frontend web developers with no prior experience with Vue or other VDOM JavaScript libraries. It would be beneficial for readers to have some JavaScript and CSS knowledge. It is aimed at quickly bringing the reader up to speed regarding just how exactly Vue is set up and how its moving parts work together. It is meant to give you an overview of almost the entire Vue landscape, succinctly, and with lots of examples. 

The goal of this book is simple – to quickly and efficiently introduce you to Vue and to ease you into the framework without a major investment of time and energy. The intended result is for you to have a huge return on investment – to gain enough practical knowledge of the framework that by the time you've read the book, which should not take long, you are confident to tackle some more advanced Vue projects and concepts.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introducing Vue, discusses what Vue is and gets started with mustache templates. We look at problems that Vue solves and reasons to use Vue.

Chapter 2, Basic Concepts of Vue 2, discusses reactivity, computed properties, and methods. We also introduce components, templates, props, watchers, and life cycle hooks.

Chapter 3, Working with Vue-CLI, Components, Props, and Slots, shows how to install vue-cli and how to set up code editors to work with Vue more effectively. We inspect the structure of a vue-cli-based project, look at how to add basic functionality to a child component, and look at passing data from children to parent components.

Chapter 4, Filters and Mixins, describes how to use filters. We look at syntax, use cases, and some examples. We also examine working with mixins.

Chapter 5, Making Your Own Directives and Plugins, looks at ways to extend Vue by making our own, custom directives. We also build our own plugin from scratch and learn how to publish it via npm.

Chapter 6, Transitions and Animations, takes the reader step by step from comparing CSS transitions with CSS animation to understanding the differences between them and how to start integrating them with Vue. We then discuss a myriad of ways to organize transitions and animations in Vue—with transition and transition-group components, with transition hooks as CSS classes, with named transition hooks, and with JavaScript transition hooks.

Chapter 7, Using Vuex, shows the reader, from the ground up, just exactly what state is and why it's important. It also explains the reasons to have the store – the centralized state – and how its internals work. We also tinker with some code examples of controlling our apps from this centralized store.

Chapter 8, Using Nuxt.js and Vue-Router, describes how SPAs work, what issues they have, and how these issues can be overcome with server-side rendering and code splitting. We then see how to build a very simple Nuxt.js app with a few pages, and some added transitions. 

To get the most out of this book

This book will work for you best if you can do the following:

  • Code basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
  • Understand in general how the internet and browsers work
  • Have some experience working with code editors and console programs
  • Are willing to download examples (or fork them from CodePen)

The JavaScript code in this book is mostly written in ES5, but as the book progresses, sometimes ES6 has sneaked in. The reason for using ES5 is because it is not assumed that the reader understands ES6 syntax. Likewise, it is not assumed that readers have not used it before—hence, a compromise was made: not to focus on the features of ES6, but not to completely disregard them either. It is the author's humble opinion that this approach will shift the focus to where it matters: understanding Vue.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packt.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packt.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

You can download the code files by following these steps:

  1. Log in or register at www.packt.com.
  2. Select the SUPPORT tab.
  3. Click on Code Downloads & Errata.
  4. Enter the name of the book in the Search box and follow the onscreen instructions.

Once the file is downloaded, please make sure that you unzip or extract the folder using the latest version of:

  • WinRAR/7-Zip for Windows
  • Zipeg/iZip/UnRarX for Mac
  • 7-Zip/PeaZip for Linux

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Vue.js-Quick-Start-Guide. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/9781789344103_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Mount the downloaded WebStorm-10*.dmg disk image file as another disk in your system."

A block of code is set as follows:

...
data: {
  // the model goes here
}
...

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

div,.thetemplate {
  font-size: 30px;
  padding: 20px;
  color: limegreen;
  font-family: Arial;

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

cd quickstart-vue

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Select System info from the Administration panel."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Note

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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General feedback: If you have questions about any aspect of this book, mention the book title in the subject of your message and email us at [email protected].

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