Creating a single Vue component inside a larger project - vue.js

I have a PHP project that uses Kirby CMS. I also use Gulp for building my assets. Now, I need to add a calculator on the homepage that is complex enough to justify the usage of Vue. How would I incorporate Vue in my project without introducing a ton of new tooling? All I want is a simple Single File Component basically. I have:
<div id="calculator"></div>
and I want the component to be rendered there. Nothing more.
After some consideration, I came up with the following options but found issues with each of them:
Use the Vue CLI for instant prototyping. That's the closest solution for my use case, but I can't easily develop the component. If I use vue serve, I get to see the component isolated in a new page. The issue lies in the fact the component isn't a part of my project's page. It's not affected by its stylesheets, layout, and other scripts. I can't know if it'll work properly once I build it and view it in my project. Running vue build on each change would be pretty painful and time consuming. Sadly, vue watch isn't a thing, which leads me to:
Creating a project and using Vue CLI Service. If I create a project, I'd be able to run vue-cli-service build --watch and have my component automatically refresh on each change of its source file. While developing the component, I simply make a change, wait for it to compile, and refresh my project in the browser to see the modified component in action. While that would work, it introduces a bunch of node_modules inside my project, along with a package.json. I feel that's too much for just a single component. It would pollute the project more than I'd like:
assets/
js/
build/
calculator/
dist/
node_modules/ # modules here
public/ # I don't need that
package.json # package here
package-lock.json
App.vue
scripts/
main.js
content/
site/
node_modules/ # modules here as well
panel/
package.json # package here as well
package-lock.json
index.php
I would basically have a project within a project.
Use vueify to compile the component with Browserify and Gulp (which I already use). While this appears OK, vueify is deprecated and not supported. Besides, I'd have to add a bunch of stuff to my gulpfile.js in order to use Babel + ESLint for the component.
How do I set up Vue in such a way that I'm able to develop a very simple component as a part of a larger project with as little friction as possible?
If anyone has dealt with a similar problem, how did they solve it?

I ended up using the second approach I mentioned in my question with one small twist - I initialized the Vue project in my main project. I merged them.
I opened the parent folder of my project in a terminal.
I ran vue create my-project where my-project was the actual folder name of my project. The CLI asked if it should overwrite the project or merge it. I chose merge.
After the project was created, my old package.json was overwritten and only had the Vue dependencies listed in it.
I reverted my old package.json and installed these packages: #vue/cli-plugin-babel, #vue/cli-service, vue-template-compiler, and vue.
I added the following npm script in my package.json:
"scripts": {
"calculator": "vue-cli-service build assets/js/calculator/main.js --watch --dest assets/js/calculator/build"
}
Result
My project's folder structure remained the same, except for a few new packages in node_modules. I put my component files in assets/js/calculator/. There, I have main.js which is the main component script, and build which is a folder containing the processed component.
I have:
<div id="calculator"></div>
in my page, and:
<script src="/assets/js/calculator/build/app.js"></script>
in the footer. When I open the page, the component is rendered correctly.
To modify the component, I simply run npm run calculator in a terminal, which spins up the CLI service. It monitors the main.js file and builds the component on each change. Once the build is complete (which happens in under a second), I refresh the page and the updated component is there.
Conclusion
I believe that's the smoothest way to handle this use case. It didn't bloat the project, all dependencies were listed, and the development experience is great. The part where my package.json got overwritten was a bit concerning, but other than that - it worked perfectly. If there's a better way to do this, please leave an answer!

This is probably not the answer you're looking for but if I were you I'd look into inline templates and x-templates as they seem well suited to your use case.
Also have a look at this blog post. It offers a nice write up about the different template authoring methods in Vue and their pros/cons.

Related

How to turn multiple vue components into one single npm package?

I was told by the project manager at the company I work for to take all the global components of a vue project we're working on and turning them into a single npm package that anyone working on the project can import and start using. essentially I have to take the global components and turn them into a component library like vuetify which is installed using npm and than imported from node modules directory.
I was wondering if you guys could point me in the right direction on how to achieve this. thanks in advance.
So, regardless of the implementation, the main thing you need is following this guide on how to create an npm package
https://docs.npmjs.com/creating-and-publishing-private-packages
Then
You create an src folder.
In the src, you will create a folder named "components" with all your -duh- components.
In the src folder, you will also create an index.js file, from there you will export your components.
export { default as VDataTable } from './components/VDataTable.vue'
// ...etc
Option1
If you use a bundler for your projects, and you know by a fact that all your codebases will use a bundler, you can simply create a folder with a package.json.
In your package.json then you will
"module": "src/index.js",
"main": "src/index.js"
In this scenario, you are letting your main project bundler (which is using the package) transpile all the packages for you, (babel, single file components)
Option 2
In case you have absolutely no clue of the nature of the projects which can use your library you will need a bundler for your components.
An example can be Rollup.
I suggest these 2 guides.
https://rollupjs.org/
https://rollup-plugin-vue.vuejs.org/
Long story short, Rollup will transpile for you the files you requested (js and css), and you will have to make them available from your package.json
"module": "src/dist/library.esm.js",
"main": "src/library.common.js"
And then you can release your package. Possibly privately or you might get fired :P

How to integrate vue-cli with existing unrelated webpack setup in the same project?

I have a project with an existing webpack setup and it's unrelated to Vue.
Until now I have multiple entry points setups and some of these entry points are opening some iframes popups, and the plan is to build these iframes with VUE.
This means that I will also have multiple VUE entry points, this shouldn't be a problem but what I can't figure out is:
what is the best way to add VUE-cli into this already existing setup and use the same node_modules folder
Also to be able to add the vue-cli build commands to be run/triggered after my existing webpack build commands.
Let me know if more details are needed?
I've figure it out and it turn out that you can have both in the same project.
I've used vue create on my existing project folder and there is a prompt with a merge options.
Unfortunately it deleted my dependencies but was not such a big deal. Just had to reinstall them.
Now my project's webpack configuration remained completely separate form vue-cli which is handled by the vue.config.js and this is exactly what I wanted.
I am using something like this to build everything at once:
"build": "webpack --config webpack.prod.js && vue-cli-service build"

Load Vue Component from ouside src directory

I have a project started with the vue-cli, and i'd love to include a component from a different local folder. I'm not that great at webpack config, so I'm not sure if it's just as simple as adding another path to some config setting. I've looked around in the docs, but everything I'm finding shows me the awesome auto scaffolding that vue init project gives us.
Any ideas?
Here's what the project structure looks like:
webroot/
-wp-content/
-wp-admin/
-wp-includes/
-other PHP classes/
-static/
-vue/
-global-components/ (<- this is where i'd like to put some generic .vue components)
-app1/ (<- this was created by vue-cli and is where i'd like to build a specific vue app for a specific wordpress page/post)
-app2/ (<- this was created by vue-cli and is where i'd like to build a different app for a specific wordpress page/post)
So, you can see there's a bunch of things going on in this repo, and I'd like to be able to reference both the src folder inside app1 and app2, but also have each app reference the global-components folder. I'm not sure that the client would like to push their custom components up to npm, and I don't think they want to build out their own private npm source, so I was hoping for a way to build multiple vue.js applications without copying these components to each individual app.
Any thoughts?

Why I have too many packages inside my node_modules?

I am new, and when i first created my app based on the documentation using npm create-react-app i found it there were a lot of package included inside folder node_module when i code and i only use react and react DOM and etc from the basic.
node_modules
acorn
timer
ansi
and many more
I wonder if anyone can help my how to understand each use inside the node_module or where can i find the documentation for each use?
or how can i just reduce to what i want to use only to decrease the app size?
The answers are 2:
because you're using an automated scaffolding tool, which essentially does everything for you, and, you have just to code, it is supposed to locally deploy all the packages it needs to work (for example webpack is needed to bundle your code, babel to transpile it, ...
under node_modules you will find all the packages of the whole app. That's means you will find both your dependencies and the dependencies of your dependencies (this rule has some exceptions and you can find them in the npm documentation.
example:
// your code depends on A
var dependency = require('A');
// but then, inside your A dependency you can also find something similar to:
var b = require('B');
how can i just reduce to what i want to use only to decrease the app size?
You basically can't do it. They are all needed.
Most of the libraries that we pull from npm have dependencies. You may use only react and react-dom but there are react-scripts that require lots of stuff. I don't think that you have to worry about the size of the node_modules. That's not what you are suppose to ship in production.
If you want to see what are these all modules about you may open their folder and fine README.md file.

SailsJS Include node_module in view

I'm using sails(http://sailsjs.com) to develop a little platform. Everything goes smoothly following the documentation. But being new to this javascript frameworks world and npm etc etc, i've been having a trouble including other node_modules and use them in the .ejs views...
I understand not all modules are to be included in the views but how can I manage to include some?
Trying to use https://www.npmjs.com/package/vue-slider-component
Thank you in advance and sorry if this error is just plain out stupid.
Your confusion is understandable. The issue is that, until relatively recently, things installed in node_modules were solely for use in the back end code; that is, your Sails.js controller actions, models, etc. After all, the node_modules folder has the word "Node" right in it, and it was created for use with NPM (the Node Package Manager) to help organize Node (i.e. server-side JavaScript) files!
While many front-end plugins were (and still are) published on Bower, newer frameworks like Angular 2 and Vue often publish their plugins to NPM because it reduces the number of moving parts for your app. The problem is, if you try to require('vue-slider-component') in your server-rendered .ejs view, the server (i.e. Sails.js) will try and load and run that code before it renders the view, where what you really want is for that plugin to run in the browser.
The long-term solution is to use something like Browserify or Webpack to compile all of your front-end JavaScript files into a "bundle". So for example if you have a file like assets/js/my-vue-app.js that includes the line:
import vueSlider from 'vue-slider-component/src/vue2-slider.vue'
then Browserify will see that line, load up that vue2-slider.vue file, add it to the top of the my-vue-app.js file, perform some other magic, combine it with your other front-end .js files and output a file like browserified.js which you would then include via <script src="/path/to/browserified.js"> in your HTML.
Since new Sails apps use Grunt to organize and inject those <script> tags into your views for you, it can be kinda confusing as to how you would get something like Browserify or Webpack to work with Sails. For Sails 1.0, there's a seed project for using Webpack instead of Grunt. For Sails v0.12.x, you'll have to Google around to find some examples of using Broswerify or Webpack with Sails.
A short-term solution, and probably not as maintainable in the long run, is to save the contents of the minified vue-js-slider component into your assets folder (e.g. as assets/js/vue-slider-component.js), add it to your HTML with <script src="/js/vue-slider-component.js"> and access it in your code as window['vue-slider-component'].