Learning a new framework can be a very daunting process for any developer, especially for one that is still learning the base language (in this case JavaScript). This is why I have decided to create this series in which I will attempt to make the learning of Vue.js as easy and digestible as possible 🙂
I'm not a fan of making long drawn out introductions, so I will assume that if you're still reading:
You have some basic HTML/CSS/JS knowledge. You don't need to be an experienced front-end developer to take on on Vue as a development framework, but at the very least you need to be able to write your own HTML markup, understand the basic of how CSS works and, yes, how to write javascript. In the end, this is what this is all about.
That's it. No, really.
Vue as a library
There are several ways in which you can incorporateVue into your web project. Let's start with the simplest one (which you will probably not end up using a lot).
Most tutorials/articles will assume that you have some understanding of how to set up a development environment in which you will use things likenpm,webpack to set up your project - and while this is ideal because of what you get out of the box - we can start with a much simpler beginner-friendly approach. The reliable old<script> tag.
Go ahead and fire up your favorite code editor, and create a new file calledindex.html. (If you don't have one yet,VS Code is a popular free choice.
<html><head><title>Vue 101</title></head><body><h1>Hello!</h1><divid="app"></div></body></html>Nothing fancy, we're just setting the bones for a simple website. Now let's get theVue library in there. Paste this script tag before your closing</body>.
[...]<scriptsrc="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vue/dist/vue.js"></script></body>Now thatVue is being loaded into our page, we can start using it.
Let's go ahead and create a new Vue instance, bynewing it up inside a<script> tag. We will give it aselector by passing#app to theel property of the options object, and that wayVue will know where our app should be rendered. (Remember that empty<div> with an ID ofapp?)
Place this code after our last script tag.
<script>constapp=newVue({el:'#app',// 1data:{// 2myLocalProperty:'Im a local property value'// 3}});</script>So what's happening here?
We created ournew Vue instance, and pass it a configuration object. See the{} as a parameter?
el:As I mentioned before, here we tell Vue where inside our HTML we want our app to be displayed. In this case, the div with theappid.dataobject. Every Vueinstance has a local storage, like a box of variables and properties that it will hold for us and that we can use when coding our app. Data holds a JavaScriptobject, so we assign it one with the{ }syntax. Inside, we place a property.myLocalProperty. This property is defined inside thedataobject for our instance, it's name is myLocalProperty and the value on the right-hand side is the value - in this case, a string.
Displaying properties on our app
Right now if you open upindex.html in your browser, not much is happening.
Let's add some code to display our property inside the HTML. Your file should look like this:
<html><head><title>Vue 101</title></head><body><h1>Hello!</h1><divid="app"><p>My local property: {{ myLocalProperty }}</p></div><scriptsrc="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vue/dist/vue.js"></script><script>constapp=newVue({el:'#app',data:{myLocalProperty:'Im a local property value'}});</script></body></html>Pay close attention to this line:
<p>My local property: {{ myLocalProperty }}</p>What's happening here is calledvariable interpolation, which is a fancy term for "I'm going to display the content of mymyLocalProperty variable in this placeholder where my{{ }} are now.
Reload the page, and you will now see the string updates to reflect our variable.
Go ahead and try to change the string insidemyLocalProperty to some other text and reload the page, you should see the text update accordingly.
Reactivity
Finally, for this lesson, let's talk aboutreactivity. You may have heard thatVue is areactive framework. But what exactly does this mean? Open up your console in the chrome developer tools, and with your index.html loaded type:
app.myLocalProperty='Vue is reactive';You will see the pagereact to this variable change!
Stay tuned for part two!
Top comments(29)
- LocationBoston, MA
- EducationPhD, French Literature, U. C. Berkeley
- Pronounsshe/her
- WorkDirector of Developer Relations at Cloudinary
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I don't think commenting on profile pics, either complimentary or not, is helpful. At all. Please refrain.
Great intro! Vue seems like a great first framework to learn.
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Thanks Andy! Stay tuned for next part, will look at responding to events and methods :)
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Are you serious? This is totally inappropriate. Women can code no matter how they look.
Thanks for the tutorial. Distilling a topic to its essence is a great way to learn a subject. Even understanding what is happening once it is deployed to production is important: KISS. I'm still learning Vue but part of the strength of Vue seems to be its simplicity, i.e. do one thing and do it well.
- LocationMunich, Germany
- WorkFullstack Developer
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Great, finally a framework tutorial without all that node/npm/webpack mess. Thanks a lot!
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Oh, we'll get to that in due time, but not nose first. It can be very daunting! :D
- LocationAccra
- WorkFullstack developer at Fundihub
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Lovely intro..i'm waiting for the part 2. But i love the cli approach.But this is great for beginners.. Thumbs up!!
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Hey Jonathan, thanks. Yeah CLI is a great tool, and it will show up sometime in the series but it's a big overwhelming for beginners. Keep tuned for more :)
- LocationAccra
- WorkFullstack developer at Fundihub
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great..i will be looking forward to it.
- LocationJakarta
- EducationUniversité de Paris - Master of Earth Science
- WorkFull-stack JavaScript Developer
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Hi Marina! Nice tutorial on Vue, really appreciate it. However, I can't seem to make the first part works. I followed exactly the code above, but myLocalProperty value was not shown! Is there something that I'm missing?
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- LocationIndia, Hyderabad
- WorkJunior frontend Engineer at Aalam
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Hi Marina. Recently I have started learning vue.js. So I am a beginner on vue and I am building a multistep form wizard in vue and I i am following your beginner guide but I was stuck at one approach. Like displaying a form based on category selection. So here we have a category field in html and whatever user enters in the category based on that enter category I want to prompt the next step. To achieve this i need some help
- LocationBengaluru
- Educationbachelors of technology
- WorkFullStack Python Django developer at Anlyz
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nice intro.
In how many parts this tutorial would be ?
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So far four and counting, and i dont have a set number in mind. I will keep going as long as it makes sense to, i dont want to break the natural flow by restricting this in advanced ;)
- LocationBengaluru
- Educationbachelors of technology
- WorkFullStack Python Django developer at Anlyz
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Okay nice to hear that. I will keep following it for better understanding of it. But i needed a crash course on vue if possible can you provide any ?
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Sorry, I don't do that :)
- LocationBangalore
- EducationPSG college of technology
- WorkSoftware developer at Accenture
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Very easy to follow! I am totally new to web development. Thanks a lot..:)
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Glad you're enjoying the series Pravin. Thanks for reading!
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