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Vue.JS is a JavaScript framework that helps a dev in developing front-end, single-page application(SPA) development for both web and mobile. A lot of experts have highly ranked Vue.js in the category of the satisfied framework in JavaScript because it allows a developer to change the content quicker, and it doesn’t let the page reload.

Whether you are an experienced developer looking to switch to Vue, or just getting started, it’s essential that you do so with the right tools. This would help you to quickly build exceptional apps without having to reinvent the wheel.

I did consider the entire development cycle of Vue JS when building up this by selecting a range of tools for this list. Beginning at setting up a boilerplate for your new application with all the essentials but also covering many important application concepts, debugging, testing and even some actual boilerplate to really help speed up your process.

1. Official Vue.js Guide

Vue Js Official Guide

If you’ve sparked an interest in Vue, than the first one should and is the official Vue JS guide, as its the best place to learn more about Vue.

This guide is available for all current and past versions of Vue, so that you can make the most of it whether you are starting up or you are looking to improve or even expand your existing app which is built upon an older version of Vue.

You can easily compare how the components has changed throughout the version history. Additional there’s videos, code segments, and interactive applications that are built-in to make the guide more interactive and easier to understand.

While the last section of the guide provides a useful comparison between other frameworks such as React and Angular. This provides an attractive way for developers who are already familiar with those frameworks to adapt to Vue.

2. Axios

Axios

Axios is a popular third-party library for creating and managing AJAX requests. Subsequent to the separation of “vue-resource”, and the once “official” AJAX library of Vue from it’s repository, this is the Vue teams go-to choice has been this, Axios.

As this has lead to an increase in the popularity and usage of Axios and its for great reason, while this is not part of the official Vue repository, Axios is very similar to its predecessor, and is universal, supports cancellation and has TypeScript definitions.

There’s one of the catches of using Axios and that is, if your server does not natively support promises, you’ll need to provide a polyfill yourself.

3. Mocha

Mocha Vue

Testing is an important aspect of building any application, it ensures the client expectations been met and that development has gone through in an appropriate manner.

This becomes more important for apps that been built with Vue, or any JavaScript framework in general. While many frameworks that can be used for this purpose, Mocha been chosen, as it runs on both the front-end and the back-end via Node.JS.

This makes asynchronous testing both convenient and more meaningful as both ends of the process are verified and the ability to map uncaught exceptions to relevant test cases on GitHub makes tracking and resolving them much more convenient.

4. Vue CLI

Vue Cli

Like in any other JavaScript framework, you can’t do much on Vue without a CLI tool.

This CLI allows you to rapidly create project structures and deploy boilerplates. It allows you to create instant prototypes to demonstrate new features, the Vue CLI offers much more like support for web development tools like TypeScript, Babel, PostCSS, ESLint, Unit Testing, PWA, and end-to-end Testing.

Its compatible with extensible third-party plugins been created by the community. While another benefit of the Vue CLI is that it doesn’t require ejecting. The GUI of the Vue CLI is one of the most important features and it allows you to create new projects and manage them easily.

5. Vuex

Vuex

State management is a considerable issue which many developers struggle with. By not having the proper control of state it would mean that an application can be unpredictable.

To help to solve this problem, Vuex is here for centralising all state management functions and only allowing state to be mutated in a predictable manner. Mutations are allowed based on State, View, and Actions.

The state defines the truths about the app,  the view displays these truths to the user, and actions cause the state to change, restarting the cycle of mutation. Vue-router also provides features such as zero-config time-travel debugging and state snapshot export / import.

6. Vue Router

Vue Router

The concept of routing shouldn’t be new if you are familiar with any other JavaScript framework. Routers are used to map application URLs to components.

Vue Router does this well and supports a component based router configuration. Also it supports router params, querying, and wildcards in order to allow for complex routing. There’s features such like transitions effects that make changing routes more attractive to users and links with active CSS classes make the Vue Router offer a lot more in comparison to other frameworks.

Plus the router provides the possibility to choose between HTML5 history or hash mode and it’s very important as it affects the user experience, especially when the nature of the app requires that users navigate to previous pages.

7. Vue Dev Tools

Vue Devtools

Debugging is crucial for an efficient development process. Its almost impossible to find out what is going on with your application without a debugging tool. You’ll find that it has plugins for both Firefox and Chrome and also a stand-alone Electron app that works in any environment. The browser plugins add “Vue” tab to their native developer tool implementations making the debugging experience smooth and user friendly.

8. Vuetify

Vuetify

Vuetify is an elegant library of handcrafted UI components that can help you to create beautiful applications even if you are not a designer.

Features

  • Vuetify consists of a total of 82+ components and supports server-side rendering.
  • Displays design and template for the projects with long term support.
  • Automated tree shaking reduces the bundle size and improves performance.
  • The official page displays good documentation to get started with Vuetify. It displays examples of pre-made layouts and supports customisation according to the required look and feel of the application.
  • Fully supported by Chromium-based browsers, Firefox, Edge, Safari 10+. Also works on IE11 and Safari 9 browsers with poly fills.

9. Electron Nuxt

Electron Nuxt

Building a desktop application can be tedious, you’ll need to pay attention to the application architecture along with the installation, packaging, and versioning. Electron-nuxt is a boilerplate to create an Electron app with Vue / Nuxt.

Features

  • An auto-updating boilerplate for easy development.
  • Support for typescript but only in the rendering process of the application.
  • Configuring ESLint.
  • Support for CSS preprocessors like Sass, LESS, and Stylus.
  • Support for parallel code compilation
  • Support for unit-testing and end-to-end testing and is configurable during vue-cli scaffolding.
  • Supports pre-installing UI components and icons like Font Awesome and Material design icon for a quick start and offline usage of the project.

10. Vuesion

Vuesion

Vuesion is a boilerplate for production-ready PWA’s, it installs quickly through npx or npm and focuses on best practices and performance during the development and production phases.

Features

  • Enables scaffolding; Create components and connecting them to modules, this is done without much effort and It enables mock APIs and tests for individual components.
  • Instant display of UI changes, helps with speedy development occurs when the UX and UI changes are displayed instantly.
  • The application state is preserved when updating code.
  • Documentation, You’ll find documents for all scenarios.

11. MEVN CLI

Mevn

Mevn-CLI works with the MEVN stack. The acronym (MEVN) stands for MongoDB, Express.js, VueJS, and Node.js. This boilerplate provides a quick start for MEVN stack-based web apps and automatically installs a local environment.

Features

  • Uses developer-friendly ES6 syntax, making the code clean and simple.
  • Modules and component-driven and keep the code clean, readable and compact.
  • It generates boilerplate code and automates redundant tasks.
  • Allows configuration with multiple DBs such as MongoDB / MySQL and mongoose ODM and sequelize ORM.
  • Consists of a set of commands and additional utilities to build the MEVN stack.

12. Vue Skeleton MVP

Vue Skeleton Mvp

Vue Skeleton MVP enables you to create Vue applications using Vue.js, Vuetify, Vue router, and Vue skeleton. Its written in Javascript using the async/await function.

Features

  • It uses Vuetify, to enhance the designs using the Material Design component framework.
  • Supports testing with cypress and mocha/chai.
  • Has built-in support for Vue router, Vuex, i18n and Google analytics.
  • The template has a landing page, protected home page, and other pages for essential CRUD operations.
  • Secures transmission of information using JSON Web Tokens (JWT).

 

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12 VueJS Developers Tools & Boilerplates