Binding some Vue code to existing, server-side generated HTML - vue.js

I have an old-style, multiple-page website, with a multiple steps checkout process. This all works with JS disabled, and it is critical that it keeps doing so.
The checkout form has no JS at all, at the moment, and I'd like to improve it progressively (eg. dynamically showing or hiding fields, doing live validation, etc...).
I have already wrapped the entire website with an #app div, and I mounted a Vue instance to it. Then I created a few components which work correctly (but are not critical, so if JS is disabled then the whole thing keeps working and the components are just empty).
Now I have a long checkout form which is generated server-side (say: <form id='address-form'>).
The best course would be to put it into a component (say <checkout-form>) and use it. I can't do this, because 1) the form is generated server-side 2) it needs to work without JS.
Ideally, I would love to create a component with no template, and attach it to the existing HTML.
Is this even possible?
Edit: continuing to dig the Internet, I found this tutorial. This is exactly my problem, but if this is the only way to do it, then I will revert to JQuery :) Manually duplicating the entire HTML (one server side, the other in Vue) is definitely not a good idea.

Related

Nuxt generated HTML and JavaScript does not work everywhere

I'm using Nuxt to build a component library for use with the various CMSs that my company uses. Basically, I want to use the generated HTML to create reusable widgets for the CMS. The CMSs in question can't use Vue components directly because the client's admin area doesn't play well with Vue (for example, the inline editor in Kentico 12 does not work at all with Vue and our clients require this functionality).
Using Nuxt to build the component library works great as long as the components don't DO anything. However, if I want to create an accordion that has an #click event, it doesn't work when loaded into the CMS. I narrowed down the issue:
A) http://example.com/Accordions/
B) http://example.com/Accordions/index.html
Case A works fine. With Case B, the page loads but none of the scripts work. The events do not fire at all, and I'm getting the following error:
"DOMException: Failed to execute 'appendChild' on 'Node': This node type does not support this method."
The Accordions component doesn't work on any page that is not http://example.com/Accordions/.
Nuxt is generating the Accordions/index.html page so I'm assuming it's connecting the route with the functionality in the JS, but I'm not sure exactly what the problem is, what to search for or how to fix it. I've been searching for hours. Can anyone help me with this?

Nested Nuxt instances

Not really a code problem more a discussion/brainstroming-post.
I would like to build some light CMS in Vue/Nuxt, which will output a static website in the end.
So I thought about going for one Nuxt-page (does not have to be a Nuxt-page necessarily) containing all the CMS-related stuff and handle the actual website inside a nuxt-child component to keep code tidy.
Problem is, that i can not access the inner Nuxt page, so any editing will be impossible (I want to achieve some simple inline-editing).
For visualization the editor of webflow may be helpful (Directlink to the video). What i want to achieve is a similar version. I would like to have the page separated from the CMS. The CMS would be the lower bottom-bar and provide stuff like the editor for the inline-editing.
Currently my best solution was to define the editing directly inside the page, which is working, but needs to be stripped out for production and makes a future separation impossible.
Is there any solution for this? Or am I thinking the wrong way?
Can I link both instances with a common vuex-store?
You could created two seperate components, one for editing and one for rendering.
These could utilize components themselves to keep the overhead to a minimun.
You could also use the same component, but lazy load the editor features based on some condition like:
If youre fine with having the Editor only available during development you can create an env variable and check for process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'production'
Another way would be to have some sort of authorization that combined with v-if would show the editor or hide it.

Target and manipulate single DOM element in vue

Somehow I still can't wrap my head around some core vue concepts.
I have made some simple webpage using phalcon. Created it so, that it would work without JS and now is the time to add some bells and whistles - ajax queries and the like, for the user experience to be better.
I wanted to do everything using vue, to see how it all adds up. But after hours of googling I still can't find solution for the simplest of tasks.
Say: I want to get a text paragraph in a series of <li>-s and change it somewhat. Maybe make excerpt of it and add 'see more' button behind it. Now, in jQuery I would just iterate with each() and perform the tasks. With vue targeting set of DOM elements is much harder for me, probably because of whole paradigm being "the other way round".
I know I could iterate with v-for, but these elements are already in the DOM, taken from the database and templated with volt. I had even this wild idea of creating .js files from phalcon, but it would completely negate my strategy of making functional webpage first and then enhance it progressively.
Frankly speaking I feel like I'm overcomplicating for the sake of it, right now. Is vue even fit for a project like this, or is it exclusively a tool to build app from the ground up?
Vue's templating is client-side, which means if you are delivering an already templated html page (by your backend) there is little vue can still do for you. Vue needs data, not DOM elements to build its viewmodels.
This becomes pretty obvious when building a single page application for example, which would be rendered only on the client-side. You'd simply load the data asynchronously from a backend api (REST for example) and then do all the rendering on the client.
As far as I understand your usecase you want to mix client and server side rendering, rendering most of the non-interactable content using your backend's templating engine and adding some interactivity using vue. In this case you'll need to add some vue components (with their own rendering logic) to your backend template and pass data to that component using vue's data-binding.
Here's an example:
...
<div id="app">
<my-vue-list :products="{% products %}"></my-vue-list>
</div>
...
And in your JS:
var app = new Vue({
el: '#app',
data: {
components: {MyVueList} // You will have to register all the components you want to use here
}
})
Vue provides the ref attribute for registering a reference to a dom element or child component:
// accessible via this.$refs.foo
<li ref="foo">...</li>
Do note, however, that refs are not reactive, as stated in the docs:
$refs is also non-reactive, therefore you should not attempt to use it in templates for data-binding.

The Vue Component is not fully rendered

I am trying to use one of the Material Design Lite templates inside my Vue.js application.
What happens is, when I am routed(using this.$router.push('/templateX') to the next page, the component is not fully rendered(I can see only the header).
What is really interesting, when I take a look at the source section inside the browser console, I can see that the template is loaded but not fully rendered.
Once I reload the page, then the whole template is rendered and everything is shown as expected.
I think the problem is in the component life cycle but I am not sure what shall I do exactly. Any thoughts?

Is there a recommended way to have all the HTML pre-loaded for SEO purposes while using VueJS, without using SSR?

As the title implies, I need solid SEO and thus I need to have all the HTML loaded on my site on initial load. However, because the backend is written in PHP, and because it would be more work to write my Vue components with the server in mind, I don't want to use server-side rendering (SSR).
That leaves me with the option to send HTML over the wire, the "old school" way. What I am thinking of doing is writing each page's HTML like normal, but make one of the root html elements a Vue element in order to "upgrade" it. So the initial load downloads the finalized HTML, with all the data (tables, lists, etc already populated), but then after all the scripts are loaded, javascript can take over to make things easier and give a better UI experience. This poses a few questions, however:
Am I limited to a single component, the root? It'd be nice to still have many sub-components that would each have their own state. Perhaps inline templates can be used somehow?
Vue templates have their own templating system, like the mustache braces for displaying variables {{ myVar }}. Will I not be able to use them? The one way I can think of is to create a Vue template (that can be loaded from an external script) that is identical to the part of the HTML that it "takes over". The downside is that I'd have to maintain that component both in the original HTML and in the vue template.
Are there any good examples of what I'm trying to accomplish here?
Edit: I want to clarify that I'm aware I can put in various components here and there throughout the page. This still poses the question of how to make those components already start out rendered. Better yet would be to turn the whole page into Vue, much like an SPA.
I need solid SEO and thus I need to have all the HTML loaded on my site on initial load.
This is not entirely true. Google (80% of search traffic) easily parses SPAs now, so SSR purely for SEO isn't required anymore.
But to answer your question in general, you should check out Laracast's Vue.js series. They go in-depth on how to use PHP with Vue.js (including templating and variables).
I'd ask what it is you want to achieve with Javascript/Vue.js in your page. If everything is already rendered in PHP, does Vue provide a simple UX enhancement or takes over most of the page's heavy lifting (navigation, etc.)? If you have no reactive data and want Vue to simply be a controller for rendered components, then knock yourself out, although it might be approaching an 'overkill' scenario.
Have you looked into Prerender SPA Plugin ( https://github.com/chrisvfritz/prerender-spa-plugin )?
It is offered in the Vue documentation as a viable alternative to server side rendering ( https://v2.vuejs.org/v2/guide/ssr.html#SSR-vs-Prerendering )
Recently I've developed a multi-page application using Vue, here is how i tried to solve the SEO (Maybe this can help you ):
Htmls of header and footer (and other main common components) are packed to the page.html(eg: home.html, search.html).
Script and style are of header and footer imported in page.js(eg: home.js, search.js).
Add div.seo-zone to page.html's div#app, which includes the main SEO data(using some h1,h2,p,div and so on), and add
.seo-zone {
display: none;
}
in your css.
4. Make sure your app's root component's el is '#app'(each page's main content can be a Vue app).
Develop your app as usual.
After Vue rendered, the div.seo-zone will be replaced with your Vue components (although it can not be seen)