Import Vue JS component from outside project dir - vue.js

I (want to) have a project structure like this:
project
app1
package.json
src/SomeComponent1
app2
package.json
src/SomeComponent2
common-components
SharedComponent
What I wish is to easily be able to import SharedComponent into SomeComponent1 or SomeComponent2. This is not possible (many errors are raised while doing so.)
I know there are more elegant ways to do this but I don't wish to introduce all the infrastructure and extra maintenance work around deploying 'common' to artifactory and having extra jenkins pipeline, etc...
Editing Webpack through vue.config.js would be best if it is possible.

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

Creating a single Vue component inside a larger project

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.

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?

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'].

When using Webpack to resolve directly to a sibling NPM project, how can I specify a resolve order wrt which node_modules to look at first?

I have two npm projects, project-a and project-b. They both publish and ought to be able to be directly depended upon by any npm project in my company. project-a depends on project-b. They both live as siblings in the same Git repo.
I want to directly import certain components from project-b into project-a. I'm very close -- by specifying a resolve.alias in project-a that looks like project-b: path.resolve(__dirname, '../project-b/entrypoint.js') I can pull in what entrypoint.js offers. However, when Webpack attempts to resolve what entrypoint imports, it looks first in project-b/node_modules. This is a problem for two reasons: we use React, so this pulls in multiple copies of React (project-a/node_modules/react and project-b/node_modules/react), which React users know will break the UI, and similarly it pulls in multiple copies of any shared dependency, of which there are many, leading to a considerable amount of otherwise benign bloat in the Webpack artifact of project-a.
My hunch is there must be a way to tell webpack to, when resolving imports in project-b, first look in project-a and failing that go ahead and look in project-b. This way it'll first look in project-a/node_modules for react whether the import statement is in project-a or project-b, leading to only project-a/node_modules copies of shared dependencies in project-a's artifact, while successfully allowing unique project-b dependencies / components to be resolved. I've played around a bunch with resolve.root, resolve.modulesDirectories, and resolve.fallback, but haven't been able to achieve what I want.
Any ideas?
I ran into a similar issue in my project, also with multiple copies of React being included in the bundle.
The solution is quite simple -- add this to your webpack (version 2) configuration under the resolve key:
modules: [path.resolve(__dirname, "node_modules"), "node_modules"]
This instructs webpack to resolve in node_modules within the build directory before resolving in node_modules in other directories. In your case, this should mean that the module is grabbed from project-a/node_modules instead of project-b/node_modules.
You can find more documentation here.