Exploring Vue.js: A Comprehensive Guide and Real-World Applications

The Application Building has gained much impetus as the professional developers are readily involved in it. The tools and trends related to application development keep changing and so the developers will have to keep pace with the advancement of technology. As a developer, picking up new frameworks and libraries is exciting but also stressful; even after some evaluation you never really know what skeletons you’re going to find out down the road. But, beyond any doubt, Vue is famed for its ease of use and simplicity. It achieves these qualities, in part, by having a focused and small API without too many extraneous features. According to The State of JavaScript 2017 survey, 48% of developers want to learn this JavaScript framework, and 20% of developers used it so far. What's even more important is that 90% of developers who dipped their toes into the technology would use it again in their future projects.

What is Vue.js?

Vue.js is a progressive framework or a library for building user interfaces. Unlike other monolithic frameworks, Vue is designed from the ground up to be incrementally adoptable. The core library is focused on the view layer only and is easy to pick up and integrate with other libraries or existing projects. It's also perfectly capable of powering sophisticated Single-Page Applications when used in combination with modern tooling and supporting libraries. The goal of Vue.js is to provide the benefits of reactive data binding and composable view components with an API that is as simple as possible. It is therefore very easy to pick up and to integrate with other libraries or existing projects. When used in combination with proper tooling and supporting libraries, Vue.js is also perfectly capable of powering sophisticated Single-Page Applications.

Why should use Vue.js?

Basically, because Vue has it all to make development smooth and easy. Its gentle learning curve is the first significant factor. Vue is also lightweight, flexible, modular and highly performant. Moreover, Vue is surrounded by amazing tools, as well as efficient state management (Vuex) and routing (Vue Router) options. The framework offers incredible development speed thanks to a wealth of ready-to-use plugins that solve critical issues in every application, enabling quick and cost-effective product development.

Features of Vue.js

1. Data binding

Data binding is a big deal in the front end world. Instead of micromanaging the DOM as we did with jQuery we now focus on data. Vue handles this neatly with a two-way reactive data-binding system. To achieve this reactivity Vue adds a number of getters and setters to every variable in your state so that it can track changes and update the DOM automatically.

2. Speed

Vue maybe not the fastest, but is really fast comparatively. Its performance is overkill for the vast majority of web projects.

3. No need external packages

With Vue, there is no need for unofficial packages like MobX or React Router for the critical parts of your application. Vue provides Vue Router and Vuex, a Redux-inspired reactive central state manager. These are great libraries on their own. They were custom-designed for Vue makes them even better.

4. Well-defined ecosystem

Vue's defined ecosystem is a massive advantage because it allows developers to choose a solution to a specific problem efficiently. They don't spend hours on finding the best one. It allows selecting only the required building blocks.

5. Gentle learning curve

Vue is one of the easiest frameworks to learn and master. One big advantage of Vue's accessibility is that it makes finding competent developers and building a fantastic development team easier.

6. HTML templates

HTML templates have been battle tested for decades in many languages and are the primary choice for writing dynamic markup in Vue.

7. Component system

The Component System is another important concept in Vue.js because it’s an abstraction that allows building large-scale applications composed of small, self-contained, and often reusable components. Vue components are created with objects. You’ll be adding boilerplate for computed properties, component state, watchers, etc. Pretty much everything in Vue has its own special syntax with more boilerplate. Vue is using arbitrary object structures instead of language features. It also offers a class-based syntax, but it’s really more of an afterthought.

8. Vue CLI

Vue is so incredibly popular also thanks to the Vue CLI - a system created and supported by the Vue Core Team that reduces to a minimum the time developers usually spend on initial project setup and scaffolding. Vue CLI is a very convenient tool for scaffolding Vue projects. Vue CLI includes a project generator that makes it easy to start a new project and generate a scaffolding ready for development. In its new imminent version, it will be even better, as it’s a complete project management solution.

9. Iteration

When you think of iteration, you’ll most likely think of arrays. Currently, Vue’s v-for directive can iterate arrays and plain objects, but not other iterable objects or data types. If you’re using a Map, for instance, and you want to iterate it with v-for, you’ll first have to convert it to an array or plain object. Since iterable objects and data types are officially part of the JavaScript language now, it’s inevitable that applications will utilize them for the benefits they offer.

10. Custom v-model

You can use the v-model directive to create two-way data bindings on form inputs. v-model is syntactic sugar over a prop and event listener. Several modifiers are available to transform the event. For example, the .number modifier, used like v-model.number=" num", will automatically typecast the input as a number. This is useful because even with type="number" on the input, the value returned from HTML input elements is always a string. This feature request is to allow custom v-model modifiers defined by users.

11. Multi-root templates

Currently, Vue has a limitation where templates require a single root node. Some Vue users are requesting multi-root templates, especially now that the feature has been added to React. If you want your component to render child nodes for some parent element, you’ll need to add a wrapper to comply with the single-root restriction.

12. Reactive refs

Reactive refs give a component an escape hatch into another component’s data model. However, when accessed via refs, the component’s data model is not reactive so it can’t be watched or included in a computed property. Reactive refs would allow it to be. Components normally communicate through props and events, and only in a parent/child relationship. For a parent component to track a child component’s data, the child must emit its state changes via events. This requires the parent to have a listener, a handler, and local data properties for storing the tracked state.

13. Community

The Vue community hangs with a chat designed for communities. For any framework to succeed in the long run; it must have the support of a strong community base and Vue.js is blessed to have that benefit from the beginning. It has a very active and large community base that is continuously evolving. So, it has a bright future from that prospect.

Vue.js applications

There are nearly 3,000 Vue.js open source projects available in the market, but we picked only the best of them to give you a little idea about the quality.

Vue-tetris - Use Vue, Vuex, Immutable to code Tetris.

Vue-js-modal - Simple to use, highly customizable, mobile-friendly Vue.js 2.0+ modal.

Vue-js-grid - Vue.js 2.x responsive grid system with smooth sorting, drag-n-drop, and reordering.

Vuefire - Vue.js 1 & 2 binding for Firebase 2 & >=3.

Vuex-persistedstate - Persist Vuex state with localStorage.

At-UI - A fresh and flat UI-Kit especially for the desktop application.

Vue-recyclerview - Mastering Large Lists with the Vue-recyclerview.

Vue-meta - Manage page meta info in Vue 2.0 components. SSR + Streaming supported.

ESLint-plugin-vue - Official ESLint plugin for Vue.js.

Vue-tables-2 - Vue.js 2 grid components.

Vuex-loading - Complex Loader Management for Vue/Vuex Applications.

iView - A high-quality UI Toolkit based on Vue.js.

Vue.js has become one of the most popularly used JavaScript frameworks. Vue.js is also getting much attention from developers and this figure is increasing with each passing day. If we talk about some stats, 90% of the developers have said that they would be using this framework again in the future projects. These figures thus clearly indicate the popularity that Vue.js has obtained. The job of the developers much easier to create cross-platform web applications with Vue.js. You can share your experiences with us in the comment section. Thank you!