Solutions to technical problems

Vue.js: loading template html files

You may want to code your Vue.js application in such way that your html templates are in separate html files, but you still do not want a build/compile step. Well, the people writing Vue dont want you do do this, but it can easily be done.

VueWithHtmlLoader-library
I wrote a little library that simply does what is required in a rather simple way. I will not hold you back and I will show you by example immediately:

My intention that the very simple Rock-paper-scissors-app shall work as an example.

Disclaimer: the library is just written and tested only with this application. The application is written primarily to demonstrate the library. The focus has been clarity and simplicity. Please feel free to suggest improvements to the library or the application, but keep in mind that it was never my intention to follow all best practices. The purpose of the library is to break a Vue best practice.

What the library does:

It creates a global object: VueWithHtmlLoader

It provides a function: VueWithHtmlLoader.component() that you shall use instead of Vue.component() (there may be unsupported/untested cases)

When using VueWithHtmlLoader.component(), you can provide templateurl:’mytemplate.html’ instead of template:’whatever Vue normally supports’

The Vue()-constructor must be called after all templateurls have been downloaded. To facilitate this, place the code that calls new Vue() inside a function, and pass that function to VueWithHtmlLoader.done()

The library will now load all templateurls. When an html template is successfully downloaded over the network Vue.component() is called normally.

When all components are initiated, new Vue() is called via the provided function

Apart from this, you can and should use the global Vue object normally for all other purposes. There may be more things that you want to happen after new Vue() has been called.

The library has no dependencies (it uses XMLHttpRequest directly).

Background
Obviously there are people (like me) with an AngularJS (that is v1) background who are used to ng-include and like it. We see Vue as a better, smaller AngularJS for the future, but we want to keep our templates in separate files without a build step.

As I see it, there are different sizes of applications (and sizes of team and support around them).

Small single-file applications: I think it is great that Vue supports simple single-file applications (with x-template if you want), implemented like my game above. This has a niche!

Applications that clearly require modularization, but optimizing loading times is not an issue, and you want to use the the simplest tools available (keep html/js separate to allow standard editor support and not require a build step). AngularJS (v1) did this nicely. I intend Vue to do it nicely too with this library.

Applications built by people or organizations that already use Webpack and such tools, or applications that are so demanding that such tools are required.

I fully respect and understand the Vue project does not want to support case 2 out of the box and that they prefer to keep the Vue framework small (and as fast as possible).

But i sense some kind of arrogance with articles like 7 Ways To Define A Component Template in Vue.js. I mean 1,2 are only useful for very small components. 3 is only useful for minimal applications that dont require modularization. 4 has very narrow use cases. 5 is insane for normal development (however, I can see cases where you want to output/generate it). And 6,7 requires a build step.

8. Put the damn HTML in an HTML-file and include it? Nowhere to be seen.

The official objection to 8 is obviously performance. I understand that pre-compiling your html instead of serving html that the client will compile is faster. But compared to everything else this overhead may be negligable. And that is what performance is all about, focusing on what is critical and keeping everything else simple. My experience is that loading data to my applications take much more time than loading the application itself.

The Illusion of Simplicity
AngularJS (v1) gave the illusion of simplicity. You just wrote JavaScript-files and (almost) HTML-files, the browser loaded everything and it just worked. I know this is just an illusion and a lot happens behind the scenes. But my experience is that this illusion works well, and it does not leak too much. Vue.js is so much simpler than AngularJS in so many ways. I think my library can keep my illusion alive.

Other options
There is thread on Stackoverflow about this and there are obviously other solutions. If you want to write .vue-files and load them there is already a library for that. For my solution I was inspired by the simple jquery example, but: 1) it is nice to not have a jquery dependency, 2) it is nice to keep the async stuff in one place, 3) the delayed call of new Vue() seems forgotten.

Feedback, limitations, bugs…
If you have suggestions for improvements or fixes of my library, please let me know! I am happy to make it better and I intend to use it for real applications.

I think this library suits some but not all (or even most) Vue.js applications. Lets not expect it to serve very complex requirements or applications that would actually benefit more of a Webpack treatment.

TODO and DONE

A minified version – I have not really decided on ambition/obfuscation level

Perhaps change loglevel if minified Vue is used? or not.

I had some problems with comments in html-files, but I failed to reproduce them. I think <!– comments –> should definitely be supported.