Navigating the Vue: A Deep Dive into Vue Router 3 for Web Developers

Hello developers! 😃 Today we are going to unravel the magic of Vue Router 3, a core component of Vue.js used to create single page applications (SPAs). Vue Router makes it very easy to leverage async javascript and Vue.js' component system to construct an application's UI. 🛠

The first step in using Vue Router 3 is to install it. We are going to assume that you already have prepared your Vue.js project. If you have not, follow the official guide here. Now let's jump into installation. In your project directory, run the following command:

npm install vue-router

This command installs Vue Router into your project.

Let's create our first route to the Home component. First, set up Webpack to handle .vue packages and create the following components in your src/components directory:

• Home.vue
• About.vue

You can leave them as default for now. Then create a router.js in your src directory and add the following code:

import Vue from 'vue';
import Router from 'vue-router';

import Home from './components/Home.vue';
import About from './components/About.vue';

Vue.use(Router);

export default new Router({
  routes: [
    {
      path: '/',
      name: 'home',
      component: Home
    },
    {
      path: '/about',
      name: 'about',
      component: About
    }
  ]
});

In the code above, we first import Vue and Vue Router, then the components which we want to link to paths. We tell Vue to use Vue Router with Vue.use(Router);. We then define and export the Router instance, setting up two routes that link to our Home and About components.

Now update your main.js to use the router:

import Vue from 'vue';
import App from './App.vue';
import router from './router';

new Vue({
  router,
  render: h => h(App)
}).$mount('#app');

This will set Vue to use the Router instance we just created. Now we can transition between our Home and About components through the paths / and /about respectively! 🎉

That concludes today's post. Vue Router is a powerful tool to help web developers create SPAs with ease. Start your journey today and dig deeper into Vue Router here. Remember, technology evolves quickly, so some references may become outdated. Happy coding! 👋

Sources:

• Vue.js
• Vue Router