Building a Vue v2 JS app using Vue-router

At the end of this post, we will have an app which shows a team member list page and team member detail pages, each with their own unique URL

This tutorial uses Vue 2.0.3, Vue Router 2.0.1 and the data has been generated using JSON Generator. The data set we will be using consists of 7 people with the following attributes:

{
		"index": 0,
		"guid": "ebee55c4-d685-4d77-a2bb-650283fb8753",
		"picture": "http://placehold.it/32x32",
		"age": 20,
		"eyeColor": "green",
		"name": "Hope Dennis",
		"company": "ZORK",
		"email": "[email protected]",
		"address": "127 Wortman Avenue, Corriganville, Marshall Islands, 5960",
		"about": "Labore velit deserunt sunt labore nisi reprehenderit voluptate consequat laboris id minim. Elit tempor occaecat sunt enim irure aliqua eiusmod minim. Ad culpa laborum laborum anim proident duis ullamco. Sit ipsum id esse proident sunt et dolor excepteur Lorem irure anim. Lorem nisi eiusmod pariatur qui duis sint minim dolore.\r\n"
}

The guid attribute will be used as the URL

Loop through data

The first step is to set up our Vue app, looping through the data and outputting the name of each of our users. If you’ve used Vue before, the following should look fairly familiar:

See the Pen Vue Router - Loop through data by Liquid Light (@liquidlight) on CodePen.

The above code is looping through the data and outputting the name attribute for each user. You could chose to output other details such as the email address or company name by inserting {{ person.email }} into the HTML code.

Create the listing component

When using Vue Router, it requires each "page" to be a Vue component. In preparation for this, let’s create a component for the user listing we've just created.

See the Pen Vue Router - Loop through data by Liquid Light (@liquidlight) on CodePen.

In the example above, I’ve made a template in the HTML using the <template> element - this is then referenced from the component using the id attribute. I found this was the neatest way of handling multi-line HTML and separating out template code from logic.

In the JS, the component has been called people-listing and includes both the template ID and declaring the props for the element. Props allow you to pass data between components - in this instance I am passing the app people array into the people-listing component. This is done by binding the prop on the HTML element (e.g. v-bind:people="people") and declaring it in the javascript component (e.g. props: ['people']) Prop are automatically declared as data, so we can start using it straight away. The component can then called using the new <people-listing v-bind:people="people" /> HTML tag.

Create the detail view component

Let’s put aside the listing component and focus on the detail view. In order to display the correct person in our template, we need to select that person from the data array and create a component to display the data.

See the Pen Vue Router - Loop through data by Liquid Light (@liquidlight) on CodePen.

For this example, I’ve hard-coded a selectedID variable in the data function so we have a GUID (the guid variable) to match and select the correct person. Notice I have replaced the <people-listing /> element in the main app HTML with <people-detail v-bind:people="people" />.

To find the correct person associated with the selectedID we utilise the filter javascript function. This returns an ID, so the first item ([0]) is returned. The item is then assigned to the person variable and passed through to the component to display it. The HTML then features displays the content required.

Setup the router

Now we have our two components, we can include Vue Router and start to display different content based on the current URL. To do this, there is some HTML and JS modifications required. First, include the Vue router javascript file:

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/vue-router/2.0.1/vue-router.js"></script>

The next step is to replace our people-detail HTML component tag with one the router understands. Update the HTML view to the following - not forgetting to pass our people prop

<div id="app">
		<router-view class="view" :people="people"></router-view>
</div>

We now need to create a new VueRouter instance in the javascript. VueRouter accepts several arguments that need to be configured, but i’ll walk you though them:

var router = new VueRouter({
	mode: 'hash',
	base: window.location.href,
	routes: []
});

The three options are:

• mode - this set’s the navigation mode. The options can be:
  • history where it users HTML5 History API to simulate different page URLs
  • hash where it places a hash in the URL before each “page” or
  • abstract works in all JavaScript environments, e.g. server-side with Node.js
• base - The base URL of your script (in this example i’ve used a javascript variable)
• routes - this is where we will define each of our routes (URLs or pages)

For this app, I've chosen to use the hash mode for navigation. This means we can use the window.location.href variable as the base path. If we had use history we would need to use a .htaccess file or similar to direct all our paths to a single file.

Once set up, VueRouter instance needs to be passed into our main Vue object:

var app = new Vue({
		router: router,
		data: {
				...
		}
}).$mount('#app');

Lastly, we need to slightly adjust our components to be objects assigned to a variable, rather than creating HTML elements.

For example, replace the following Vue.component call

Vue.component('people-listing', {

with a new Vue.extend method

var PeopleListing = {

We are also going to add a name attribute, to make debugging easier

name: 'PeopleListing'

Our Vue app should now look like:

See the Pen Vue Router - Loop through data by Liquid Light (@liquidlight) on CodePen.

Which may seem “broken” as it’s now not outputting any data.

Create the routes

Routes are the different URLs the app uses to display different components. Each URL needs to be defined in the routes array - including the homepage. The routes we are going to use are as follows:

• / - A single slash signifies the homepage of the app, this is going to display our PeopleListing component
• /:id - The colon signifies the route is variable and will be replaced with the guid in our URL - this will display the PersonDetail component

Firstly, define the route for the landing page. With this, we are going to define the URL and the Vue component to display when viewing this URL:

If you are the following to your routes array:

routes: [
	{path: '/', component: PeopleListing}
]

You should see your listing view component appear when viewing the page. This is telling the router to show the PeopleListing component when on the / path.

Our second route is going to define the person detail view. As we are going to use the GUID dynamically for the URL, we need to name the route. - this will all become clear in a second. Our routes array now looks like:

routes: [
	{path: '/', component: PeopleListing},
	{name: 'person', path: '/:id', component: PersonDetail}
]

The second route now has a name of person and includes a dynamic variable in the path.

Any links using the router need to be constructed using the router-link element. More details can be found in the router-link documentation.

For example, to link to the landing/homepage you can include the following:

<router-link to="/">Homepage</router-link>

You can go ahead and add this to your people-detail-template.

We now need to add a link to our detail page in our listing component. Update the people-listing component to include the following router-link

<li v-for="person in people">
		{{ person.name }}
		<router-link :to="{ name: 'person', params: { id: person.guid }}">View Details</router-link>
</li>

You’ll notice because we are passing in dynamic data, the to attribute now has a : in front of it - this is shorthand for v-bind:to. You’ll also notice instead of specifying the URL, we call the name and pass the guid through as the id.

Now when you view your page and click one of the links, you’ll find it should (hopefully) navigate to #/{guid} where {guid} is a string.

The last step is displaying the correct data at this point. You can remove the fixed selectedID from the main Vue data object and in your PersonDetail component, replace the following in your if statement this.$parent.selectedID with the parameter from the URL: this.$route.params.id.

Success! You now have a web app which displays data and has shareable links for each person.

Let me know in the comments below if you have any problems or have a better way of using the Vue router on the client side.

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Edit: I have updated the blog post to use props instead of this.$parent to pass data (as is the proper way)