Unlocking the Power of Vue Composables
Vue 3 has introduced a game-changing concept: Vue composables. These functions allow you to extract reactive state and functionality, making it reusable across multiple components. In this article, we’ll explore the world of Vue composables, creating one from scratch and discovering external libraries that can simplify your workflow.
What are Vue Composables?
Composables are functions that use the Composition API to implement reactive and reusable logic. They act as external functions, extracting state and functionality to be used across several components. Think of them as a more efficient way to handle reusability in your applications.
The Benefits of Composables
By using composables, you can:
- Simplify your workflow by extracting and importing functionality into an external file
- Reuse logic across multiple components, reducing code duplication
- Create utility functions that use reactive state and can be customized for different purposes
- Manage the state of the output, choosing whether it should be global or local
Creating a Vue Composable from Scratch
Let’s create a speech recognition composable using the Web Speech API. We’ll start by initializing the API and checking if it’s supported by the browser. Then, we’ll add a function to check if the API is listening and set the value to true or false. Finally, we’ll return the values and methods in an object.
Here’s an example of the useSpeechRecognition composable:
“`javascript
import { ref } from ‘vue’
export default function useSpeechRecognition() {
const isListening = ref(false)
const recognition = new webkitSpeechRecognition()
recognition.onresult = event => {
console.log(event.results[0][0].transcript)
}
recognition.onerror = event => {
console.error(event.error)
}
recognition.onstart = () => {
isListening.value = true
}
recognition.onend = () => {
isListening.value = false
}
return {
isListening,
start: () => recognition.start(),
stop: () => recognition.stop()
}
}
“`
Using External Libraries for Composable Functions
There are several external libraries available that provide pre-built composable functions. Two popular options are:
- VueUse: Provides over 200 composable functions for Vue 2 and 3 apps. It’s written in TypeScript and has excellent documentation.
- vue-composables: Offers a range of generic composition API functions for Vue 2 and 3 apps. It’s also written in TypeScript and has a simple, easy-to-use API.
Conclusion
Composables are a powerful tool in Vue 3, allowing you to extract and reuse logic across multiple components. By creating your own composables or using external libraries, you can simplify your workflow, reduce code duplication, and improve the maintainability of your applications. Whether you’re building a small app or a complex enterprise-level application, composables are definitely worth exploring.