vue-mu: Manage Multiple Vue.js Apps

Manage multiple instances of a Vue.js app with individual configuration.

Introduction

vue-mu is a Vue.js plugin that helps you to manage Vue.js apps in environments, which serve multiple instances of the same Vue.js app with different configuration settings.

Purpose

By default Vue.js does not provide a handsome way to configure instances of the same app independently.

Imagine a server side served dashboard page. This dashboard contains multiple same-looking widgets which display different table based contents provided by an API, each widget is a Vue.js app. The base for these widgets could easily be one single Vue.js app. But how do we configure these app instances independently? You could do some inline-scripting... Or you can use vue-mu and provide individual configuration properties via the html data attribute to each app instance.

Installation

Via CDN

Add vue-mu after vue:

<!-- latest development version, includes helpful console warnings by default -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vue-mu/dist/vue-mu.umd.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/vue-mu/dist/vue-mu.umd.js"></script>

<!-- latest production version, minified and silent by default -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vue-mu"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/vue-mu"></script>

Via NPM

npm install --save vue-mu

import Vue from 'vue'; // replace vue
import VueMu from 'vue-mu'; // with vue-mu

Do not remove vue from your package.json and node_modules, it is used internally by vue-mu.

Setup

vue-mu needs a new identifier, to load your app. Switch into the HTML code where your <div id="app" /> entry container resides and make one modification:

<div id="app"></div> <!-- replace this -->
<div data-vue-mu-el="myapp"></div> <!-- with this -->

Now you will notice, that your app won't mount anymore. Fix it by replacing the Vue.js initialization in your JavaScript code with vue-mu:

// replace vue
new Vue({ /* vue configuration options */ }).$mount('#app');

// with vue-mu
new VueMu(
  { /* vue configuration options */ },
  { el: 'myapp', /* ...more vue-mu configuration options */ }
);

Usage

Add configuration options via data attributes:

<div
  data-vue-mu-el="myapp"
  data-vue-mu-config-hello="Hello from instance configuration"
  data-vue-mu-config-is-admin="true"
  data-vue-mu-config-price="90.99"
></div>

Use the new configuration properties inside your Vue.js app:

{
  // some vue data, computed properties, methods...
  created() {
    console.log(this.$mu.config);
  }
}

If you've done everything right, this will print your new configuration properties to the console of your browser:

// console.log() output inside devtools
{
  hello: 'Hello from instance configuration',
  isAdmin: true,
  price: 90.99
}

Does it? Congrats, you are now a successful user of vue-mu.

Multiple instances

This is the hot stuff where vue-mu reveals its power. Duplicate the HTML entry element and make some changes inside the data-vue-mu-config-* attribute values of the new element. Reload the page. Now you should get two Vue.js app instances with different configuration.

this.$mu.config

this.$mu.config is globally available in your app and contains all the configuation options you hand over via data-vue-mu-config-* attributes to the instance.

Access single configuration properties by typing this.$mu.config.isAdmin, this.$mu.config.price...

Usage inside Vue.js templates

Use vue-mu configuration inside your Vue.js templates:

<template>
  <div>{{ $mu.config.hello }}</div>
</template>

Configuration property key format

All data-vue-mu-config-* attributes should be written in kebab-case format. Inside the Vue.js app instance these config properties are available in camelCase format:

HTML data attribute	Access inside Vue.js
data-vue-mu-config-foobar	this.$mu.config.foobar
data-vue-mu-config-foo-bar	this.$mu.config.fooBar

Configuration property value format

As you may have already noticed, vue-mu automatically converts the values of the data config attributes into their natural format via auto-parse. Some examples:

HTML data attribute value	Value format inside Vue.js
data-vue-mu-config-foo="Test"	String
data-vue-mu-config-foo="90.99"	Number
data-vue-mu-config-foo="true"	Boolean

Global configuration property

You can use data-vue-mu-config='{ "some": "json", "config": "data" }' directly to pass all configuration properties at once. This can be combined with additive data-vue-mu-config-* attributes, which will in turn override duplicate properties defined in data-vue-mu-config.

<div
  data-vue-mu-el="myapp"
  data-vue-mu-config='{
    "hello": "Hello from instance configuration",
    "isAdmin": true,
    "price": 90.99
  }'
  data-vue-mu-config-hello="Hello world!"
></div>

Results in:

// console.log(this.$mu.config)
{
  hello: 'Hello world!',
  isAdmin: true,
  price: 90.99
}

Options

Format	Required	Property	Default value	Description
String	true	el	undefined	Identifier for the Vue.js app instances
String	false	ident	'vue-mu'	Data attribute identifier data-vue-mu-*. Change this eg. to app if you want to access vue-mu by data-app-*.
Boolean / Selector	false	observe	false	Observe DOM changes and initialize app instances dynamically. true observes the whole document <body>, document.querySelector('.foo') or document.querySelectorAll('.bar') observes only changes in these elements. Selector elements must be present before vue-mu gets loaded.
Boolean	false	silent	false *	If set to false vue-mu throws errors on misconfiguration (*: defaults true in minified browser/umd version)
Boolean	false	strict	false	Only accept data-vue-mu-config-* properties defined in config option
Object	false	config	{}	Use this to define a default configuration for instances, overwritable by data properties.

Example configuration:

new VueMu(
  {
    // some vue data, computed properties, methods...
    created() {
      console.log(this.$mu.config);
    }
  },
  {
    el: 'myapp',
    ident: 'vue-mu',
    silent: false,
    strict: true,
    config: {
      hello: '',
      isAdmin: false,
    }
  }
);

Advanced usage

Usage inside Vuex

Access vue-mu configuration inside Vuex the same way you are using it inside your Vue.js app:

new Vuex.Store({
  // state, getters, mutations
  actions: {
    someAction() {
      console.log(this.$mu.config.hello);
      // more action specific code
    }
  }
});

Instance scoped Vuex

If you have multiple instances of the same app running Vuex, you may want to scope the store to each instance individually.

import Vue from 'vue';
import Vuex from 'vuex';

Vue.use(Vuex);

// change this
export default new Vuex.Store({ /* store config */});

// to this
export default () => new Vuex.Store({ /* store config */});

Global installation for multiple Vue.js apps

If multiple different apps use vue-mu you should think about loading vue-mu and vue globally (for example via CDN) to save bandwith and bundle size.

<!-- entry elements go here -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vue/dist/vue.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vue-mu/dist/vue-mu.umd.js"></script>
<!-- import vue-app scripts here -->

If you are using vue-cli you should mark vue and vue-mu as external dependencies inside vue.config.js in each app:

module.exports = {
  chainWebpack: (config) => {
    config.externals({
      vue: 'Vue',
      'vue-mu': 'VueMu',
    });
  },
};

Global configuration defaults

Set some global defaults, used by every app. Apps can overwrite these defaults via their instance settings:

<!-- entry elements go here -->
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vue/dist/vue.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vue-mu/dist/vue-mu.umd.js"></script>
<script>
VueMu.defaults = {
  strict: true,
  silent: false,
  // ...
};
</script>
<!-- import vue-app scripts here -->

---

License

vue-mu is licensed under the MIT license.

Copyright (C) 2019 Leonard Hertel