Can Vue-Router handle clicks from normal anchors rather than router-link? - vuejs2

Question

I have a scenario where there are two major components on a page; a frame-like component that contains common functionality for many applications (including a bookmark/tab bar) and my actual application code.
Since the frame doesn't actually own the page that it's included on, it seems like it would be incorrect for it to define any routes, however the current page may define their own routes that may match one of those links. In that case, I'd like vue-router to handle those anchor clicks and navigate appropriately rather than doing a full page reload.
Here's a simplified template of what this looks like:
Frame (an external dependency for my app):
<Frame>
<TabStrip>
</TabStrip>
<slot></slot>
<Frame>
App1:
<Frame>
<App>You're looking at: {{ pageId }}!</App>
</Frame>
So when any of the app1 domain links are clicked from that tab strip, I want my route definitions in app1 to pick that up rather than it causing a page load. Since that component is owned by the frame, I don't have access to write <router-link> since links to many different apps may co-exist there.
Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Whoo, this is an old one! However, since this question was high in my search results when I was researching this problem, I figured I should answer it.
My use-case was similar to the one in the comments: I needed to capture normal <a> links within rendered v-html and parse them through the router (the app is rendering Markdown with a light modification that generates internal links in some cases).
Things to note about my solution:
I'm using Vue3, not Vue2; the biggest difference is that this is the new Vue3 composition-style single page component syntax, but it should be easy to backport to Vue2, if necessary, because the actual things it's doing are standard Vue.
I stripped out the markdown logic, because it doesn't have anything to do with this question.
Note the code comment! You will very likely need to design your own conditional logic for how to identify links that need to be routed vs. other links (e.g. if the application in the original question has same-origin links that aren't handled by the Vue app, then copy/pasting my solution as-is won't work).
<script setup>
import { useRouter } from "vue-router"
const router = useRouter()
const props = defineProps({
source: {
type: String,
required: true,
},
})
function handleRouteLink(event) {
const target = event.target
// IMPORTANT! This is where you need to make a decision that's appropriate
// for your application. In my case, all links using the same origin are
// guaranteed to be internal, so I simply use duck-typing for the
// properties I need and compare the origins. Logic is inverted because I
// prefer to exit early rather than nest all logic in a conditional (pure
// style choice; works fine either way, and a non-inverted conditional is
// arguably easier to read).
if (!target.pathname || !target.origin || target.origin != window.location.origin) {
return
}
// We've determined this is a link that should be routed, so cancel
// the event and push it onto the router!
event.preventDefault()
event.stopPropagation()
router.push(target.pathname)
}
</script>
<template>
<div v-html="source" #click="handleRouteLink"></div>
</template>