Further thoughts on using Vue

I’ve been working exclusively with Vue for the past year, and my thoughts on Vue have changed over that time.

When I started using Vue it was when Vue 3 was beginning to be released and there were many changes to how you should build your Vue3 apps. First, you could use both options API and Composition API, which you still can, but the documentation on how to use the new Composition API was still fresh and there were many questions about this new approach. I found myself refactoring a few components in my application from the Options API approach to the Composition API approach, which while fairly straightforward, was a bit of work to do.

Then there was the introduction of the <script setup> approach within the Composition API, this approach now seems to be the preferred way of creating components in Vue 3, but unfortunately, I’ve used the original approach of the Composition API and refactoring again to the script setup approach isn’t something I can justify. I do think that going forward the script setup approach is the way to go and thankfully Vue allows this mix of approaches.

The second major change in Vue has been Vite and the move to this being the preferred approach to building a Vue app over the Vue CLI. You can still use the CLI, but with Vite and the improvements in its speed of it over the CLI, I think that Vite will soon become the default way to start and run a Vue application. Going forward I will use Vite over the CLi for any new Vue applications I create.

The final change I’ve seen since starting to use Vue is the replacement of Vuex with Pinia as the main state management approach within Vue. The application I’ve been working on does use Vuex and has a few Actions, Mutations and Getters from Vuex, which according to the Pinia documentation can be refactored into a Pinia-based approach, but again like the refactoring work needed to convert my Composition API components to using the Script setup approach, this is a large refactoring piece of work that is difficult to justify to my client at this time. Again thankfully Vue 3 still supports using Vuex even though it is no longer being actively updated and should be replaced by Pinia.

Since starting with Vue, the stack I started with and the stack I would use now has gone from Vue 3, Composition API, Vue CLI and Vuex to Vue 2, Composition API (script setup approach) Vite and Pinia.
This to me, seems the ideal approach for building a Vue app.

Now I’ve been working with Vue for the last few months I’m really enjoying working with it and I think I’ll continue working with it, learning more about using it and the best practices for building Vue apps.