Installing Vue.js without Vue CLI

Vue.js with Webpack hot reloading, SASS, Jest and Vue-Standard ESLint configuration

I love Vue.js and I love Vue CLI, but after a while of working with the enforced limitations of the folder structure and certain configurations in the projects created by the CLI, I wanted to set up a full project of my own where I am in full control of the packages and configurations.

This is but a few quick - and somewhat simple - examples that build on top of one another on what I’ve achieved for myself. I’ve been trying to find blog posts on how to achieve the full functionality of a project created by Vue CLI, but manually, and I wasn’t able to find any that cover it from start to finish. I realise now that it would be a long read if it’s presented step by step, so this is not a blog post and is meant mostly for people who at least sort of know what they are doing, although it shouldn’t be hard to figure out by looking up each configuration parameter for linked packages.

You can clone the repository and try running yarn build (or any other command from the package.json) from any of the top folders to see the result.

• Barebones Vue.js with Webpack and ESLint
• Adding SASS
• Adding Jest for unit testing
• Adding some extras

I’m not a very active developer, so if you find errors or if this becomes outdated without me noticing, please shoot me an issue and a pull request in order to fix it as soon as possible.

Barebones Vue.js with Webpack and ESLint

Packages

yarn add -D vue vue-loader vue-template-compiler webpack webpack-cli webpack-dev-server babel-loader @babel/core @babel/preset-env vue-style-loader css-loader postcss-loader autoprefixer cssnano html-webpack-plugin clean-webpack-plugin eslint@"<6.0.0" eslint-config-standard eslint-plugin-import eslint-plugin-node eslint-plugin-promise eslint-plugin-standard eslint-plugin-vue babel-eslint

vue, vue-loader and vue-template-compiler are the basic requirements to compile Vue files to JavaScript.

webpack, webpack-cli and webpack-dev-server are the basics of Webpack.

babel-loader, @babel/core and @babel/preset-env are required to transpile ES6 code to ES5.

vue-style-loader and css-loader are two Webpack loaders that will figure out where the CSS is and inject it into the final HTML file.

post-css-loader is another Webpack loader that allows processing of CSS. Its plugins autoprefixer and cssnano add vendor-specific prefixes to your CSS rules and minify the stylesheets.

html-webpack-plugin will inject the compiled JavaScript into our main HTML file and move it to the dist folder.

clean-webpack-plugin is used to clean up the dist folder before every build.

eslint, eslint-config-standard, eslint-plugin-import, eslint-plugin-node, eslint-plugin-promise, eslint-plugin-standard, eslint-plugin-vue abd babel-eslint are all the required packages and their dependency plugins to get linting to your project with ESLint and Vue-flavored Standard.js linting configuration. If you’re interested in the Vue-flavored part, have a look at the different possible configurations in the eslint-plugin-vue configs.

Note: The reason I’m installing eslint@<"6.0.0" is because eslint-plugin-vue hasn’t released a version supporting eslint@^6.0.0 yet and it breaks linting in your IDE.

Configuration files

.gitignore

.DS_Store
node_modules
dist
coverage
# local env files
.env.local
.env.*.local
# Log files
npm-debug.log*
yarn-debug.log*
yarn-error.log*
# Editor directories and files
.idea
.vscode
*.suo
*.ntvs*
*.njsproj
*.sln
*.sw*

.babelrc.js

module.exports = {
  presets: ['@babel/preset-env']
}

webpack.config.js

const path = require('path')
const webpack = require('webpack')
const HtmlWebpackPlugin = require('html-webpack-plugin')
const VueLoaderPlugin = require('vue-loader/lib/plugin')
const { CleanWebpackPlugin } = require('clean-webpack-plugin')
module.exports = {
  context: path.resolve(__dirname),
  entry: {
    main: './src/main.js'
  },
  output: {
    path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist'),
    filename: '[name].[hash].js'
  },
  resolve: {
    alias: {
      vue$: 'vue/dist/vue.esm.js',
      '@': path.resolve(__dirname, 'src'),
      '~': path.resolve(__dirname)
    }
  },
  devServer: {
    open: true,
    hot: true
  },
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.m?jsx?$/,
        use: 'babel-loader'
      },
      {
        test: /\.vue$/,
        use: 'vue-loader'
      },
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        use: [
          'vue-style-loader',
          'css-loader',
          'postcss-loader'
        ]
      }
    ]
  },
  plugins: [
    new CleanWebpackPlugin(),
    new VueLoaderPlugin(),
    new webpack.HotModuleReplacementPlugin(),
    new HtmlWebpackPlugin(
      {
        template: './public/index.html'
      }
    )
  ]
}

postcss.config.js

if (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production') {
  module.exports = {
    plugins: [
      require('autoprefixer'),
      require('cssnano')
    ]
  }
} else {
  module.exports = {
    plugins: []
  }
}

.eslintrc.js

module.exports = {
  root: true,
  env: {
    node: true
  },
  parserOptions: {
    parser: 'babel-eslint'
  },
  extends: [
    'standard',
    'plugin:vue/recommended'
  ],
  rules: {
    // we should always disable console logs and debugging in production
    'no-console': process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production' ? 'error' : 'off',
    'no-debugger': process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production' ? 'error' : 'off'
  }
}

package.json

Omitting the unimportant (for this guide) settings of the package.json

{
  "license": "MIT",
  "scripts": {
    "serve": "webpack-dev-server --mode development",
    "build": "NODE_ENV=production webpack --mode production"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@babel/core": "^7.5.5",
    "@babel/preset-env": "^7.5.5",
    "autoprefixer": "^9.6.1",
    "babel-eslint": "^10.0.2",
    "babel-loader": "^8.0.6",
    "clean-webpack-plugin": "^3.0.0",
    "css-loader": "^3.1.0",
    "cssnano": "^4.1.10",
    "eslint": "<6.0.0",
    "eslint-config-standard": "^13.0.1",
    "eslint-plugin-import": "^2.18.2",
    "eslint-plugin-node": "^9.1.0",
    "eslint-plugin-promise": "^4.2.1",
    "eslint-plugin-standard": "^4.0.0",
    "eslint-plugin-vue": "^5.2.3",
    "html-webpack-plugin": "^3.2.0",
    "postcss-loader": "^3.0.0",
    "vue": "^2.6.10",
    "vue-loader": "^15.7.1",
    "vue-style-loader": "^4.1.2",
    "vue-template-compiler": "^2.6.10",
    "webpack": "^4.39.0",
    "webpack-cli": "^3.3.6",
    "webpack-dev-server": "^3.7.2"
  }
}

Adding SASS

This section is based completely on the previous one and will only show the full configuration files that have any changes. So if a file is omitted here it does not mean it’s not required - it just isn’t affected by adding SASS.

Additional packages

These are the packages on top of the ones install previously.

yarn add -D node-sass sass-loader

node-sass is the package to compile CSS from SASS that runs on C (you may replace it with dart-sass

sass-loader is the Webpack loader required to process SASS fileshich has its own benefits)

Configuration files

webpack.config.js

Only the module configuration has changed in this file.

/* ... */
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.m?jsx?$/,
        use: 'babel-loader'
      },
      {
        test: /\.vue$/,
        use: 'vue-loader'
      },
      {
        test: /\.(sa|sc|c)ss$/,
        use: [
          'vue-style-loader',
          'css-loader',
          'postcss-loader',
          'sass-loader'
        ]
      }
    ]
  },
/* ... */

package.json

{
  "license": "MIT",
  "scripts": {
    "serve": "webpack-dev-server --mode development",
    "build": "NODE_ENV=production webpack --mode production"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@babel/core": "^7.5.5",
    "@babel/preset-env": "^7.5.5",
    "autoprefixer": "^9.6.1",
    "babel-eslint": "^10.0.2",
    "babel-loader": "^8.0.6",
    "clean-webpack-plugin": "^3.0.0",
    "css-loader": "^3.1.0",
    "cssnano": "^4.1.10",
    "eslint": "<6.0.0",
    "eslint-config-standard": "^13.0.1",
    "eslint-plugin-import": "^2.18.2",
    "eslint-plugin-node": "^9.1.0",
    "eslint-plugin-promise": "^4.2.1",
    "eslint-plugin-standard": "^4.0.0",
    "eslint-plugin-vue": "^5.2.3",
    "html-webpack-plugin": "^3.2.0",
    "node-sass": "^4.12.0",
    "postcss-loader": "^3.0.0",
    "sass-loader": "^7.1.0",
    "vue": "^2.6.10",
    "vue-loader": "^15.7.1",
    "vue-style-loader": "^4.1.2",
    "vue-template-compiler": "^2.6.10",
    "webpack": "^4.39.0",
    "webpack-cli": "^3.3.6",
    "webpack-dev-server": "^3.7.2"
  }
}

Adding Jest for unit testing

Additional packages

These are the packages on top of the ones install previously.

yarn add -D jest vue-jest @vue/test-utils babel-core@^7.0.0-bridge.0 babel-jest jest-serializer-vue jest-transform-stub

jest is the base package

vue-jest is the Vue single-file component files compiler for Jest

@vue/test-utils is the official unit testing library for Vue.js

babel-jest allows writing tests in ES6 syntax and babel-core@^7.0.0-bridge.0 is a dependency package.

jest-serializer-vue allows snapshot testing and jest-transform-stub is used to avoid errors when importing JavaScript assets.

Note: Some of these packages are still dependent on the old babel-core@^6.0.0 which has been renamed to @babel/core once it was released as ^7.0.0. Since @babel/core is already installed you have to install babel-core@^7.0.0-bridge.0 package to “fake” the older version alongside the new one. Read more about it on babel-bridge Github page.

Configuration files

jest.config.js

module.exports = {
  moduleFileExtensions: [
    'js',
    'json',
    'vue'
  ],
  transform: {
    '^.+\\.vue$': 'vue-jest',
    '.+\\.(css|styl|less|sass|scss|svg|png|jpg|ttf|woff|woff2)$': 'jest-transform-stub',
    '^.+\\.jsx?$': 'babel-jest'
  },
  moduleNameMapper: { // webpack aliases
    '^@/(.*)$': '<rootDir>/src/$1',
    '^~/(.*)$': '<rootDir>/$1'
  },
  snapshotSerializers: [
    'jest-serializer-vue'
  ],
  testMatch: [
    '**/*.spec.(js|jsx|ts|tsx)|**/__tests__/*.(js|jsx|ts|tsx)'
  ],
  testURL: 'http://localhost/'
}

.eslintrc.js

/* ... */
  env: {
    node: true,
    jest: true
  },
/* ... */

package.json

{
  "license": "MIT",
  "scripts": {
    "serve": "webpack-dev-server --mode development",
    "build": "NODE_ENV=production webpack --mode production",
    "test": "jest"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@babel/core": "^7.5.5",
    "@babel/preset-env": "^7.5.5",
    "@vue/test-utils": "^1.0.0-beta.29",
    "autoprefixer": "^9.6.1",
    "babel-core": "^7.0.0-bridge.0",
    "babel-eslint": "^10.0.2",
    "babel-jest": "^24.8.0",
    "babel-loader": "^8.0.6",
    "clean-webpack-plugin": "^3.0.0",
    "css-loader": "^3.1.0",
    "cssnano": "^4.1.10",
    "eslint": "^<6.0.0",
    "eslint-config-standard": "^12.0.0",
    "eslint-plugin-import": "^2.18.2",
    "eslint-plugin-node": "^9.1.0",
    "eslint-plugin-promise": "^4.2.1",
    "eslint-plugin-standard": "^4.0.0",
    "eslint-plugin-vue": "^5.2.3",
    "html-webpack-plugin": "^3.2.0",
    "jest": "^24.8.0",
    "jest-serializer-vue": "^2.0.2",
    "jest-transform-stub": "^2.0.0",
    "node-sass": "^4.12.0",
    "postcss-loader": "^3.0.0",
    "sass-loader": "^7.1.0",
    "vue": "^2.6.10",
    "vue-jest": "^3.0.4",
    "vue-loader": "^15.7.1",
    "vue-style-loader": "^4.1.2",
    "vue-template-compiler": "^2.6.10",
    "webpack": "^4.39.0",
    "webpack-cli": "^3.3.6",
    "webpack-dev-server": "^3.7.2"
  }
}

Adding some extras

At this point you have an environment with Vue.js, Webpack hot reloading dev server, Webpack building for production, SASS and Jest.

What I don’t like is that this set up will inject the compiled CSS as separate <style> tags into the <head> of the index.html file with the help of JavaScript - there are no CSS files.

Also, SASS is about flexibility and I like to use global variables and mixins that I’d like to be available everywhere I write SASS.

There are also some other goodies that Vue.js installs for you, which are not essential, but are great to have nonetheless.

Additional packages

yarn add -D mini-css-extract-plugin style-resources-loader preload-webpack-plugin@^3.0.0-beta.3 friendly-errors-webpack-plugin copy-webpack-plugin url-loader file-loader

mini-css-extract-plugin is a Webpack plugin that will extract the compiled CSS into separate files and add appropriate <link> tags to the <head> of the index.html file.

style-resources-loader allows sharing global variables, mixins and functions across all style files without the need to @import them manually.

preload-webpack-plugin is an extension of the previously-installed html-webpack-plugin which allows support for the Preload standard, which improves performance in the newer browsers that implement it by telling them to start fetching the resources ahead of time.

Currently preload-webpack-plugin only supports Webpack 4 in the 3.0.0-beta.x versions. At the moment of writing 3.0.0-beta.3 was released 9 months ago…

fiendly-errors-webpack-plugin is making developer life easier by prioritising the different console errors in a sofisticated manner. This works well with webpack.ProgressPlugin() - the combination will make the terminal behave like in a Vue CLI installed project: it will show building progress, clear when requireda and show prioritized errors first. Remember to mute the Webpack when installing this (stats and devServer.quiet)

copy-webpack-plugin copies files or folders directly to the build folder - useful for moving everything in the public folder.

url-loader is a Webpack loader which trasform certain files into base64-encoded strings - useful if you have small images that don’t actually need to be added as files and can be embedded staight into the code as base64 URIs.

file-loader resolves import / require() on a file into a url and emits the file into the output directory.

Configuration files

webpack.config.json

const path = require('path')
const webpack = require('webpack')
const HtmlWebpackPlugin = require('html-webpack-plugin')
const VueLoaderPlugin = require('vue-loader/lib/plugin')
const { CleanWebpackPlugin } = require('clean-webpack-plugin')
const CopyWebpackPlugin = require('copy-webpack-plugin')
const PreloadWebpackPlugin = require('preload-webpack-plugin')
const MiniCssExtractPlugin = require('mini-css-extract-plugin')
const FriendlyErrorsWebpackPlugin = require('friendly-errors-webpack-plugin')
module.exports = {
  stats: 'none',
  context: path.resolve(__dirname),
  entry: {
    main: './src/main.js'
  },
  output: {
    path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist'),
    filename: '[name].[hash].js'
  },
  resolve: {
    alias: {
      vue$: 'vue/dist/vue.esm.js',
      '@': path.resolve(__dirname, 'src'),
      '~': path.resolve(__dirname)
    }
  },
  devServer: {
    open: true,
    hot: true,
    quiet: true
  },
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.m?jsx?$/,
        use: 'babel-loader'
      },
      {
        test: /\.vue$/,
        use: 'vue-loader'
      },
      {
        test: /\.(sa|sc|c)ss$/,
        use: [
          'vue-style-loader',
          MiniCssExtractPlugin.loader,
          'css-loader',
          'postcss-loader',
          'sass-loader',
          {
            loader: 'style-resources-loader',
            options: {
              patterns: [
                path.resolve(__dirname, 'src/styles/variables/*.scss'),
                path.resolve(__dirname, 'src/styles/mixins/*.scss')
              ]
            }
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        test: /\.(png|jpe?g|gif|webp)(\?.*)?$/,
        use: [
          {
            loader: 'url-loader',
            options: {
              limit: 4096,
              fallback: {
                loader: 'file-loader',
                options: {
                  name: 'img/[name].[hash:8].[ext]'
                }
              }
            }
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        test: /\.(svg)(\?.*)?$/,
        use: [
          {
            loader: 'file-loader',
            options: {
              name: 'img/[name].[hash:8].[ext]'
            }
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        test: /\.(woff2?|eot|ttf|otf)(\?.*)?$/i,
        use: [
          {
            loader: 'url-loader',
            options: {
              limit: 4096,
              fallback: {
                loader: 'file-loader',
                options: {
                  name: 'fonts/[name].[hash:8].[ext]'
                }
              }
            }
          }
        ]
      },
      {
        test: /\.(mp4|webm|ogg|mp3|wav|flac|aac)(\?.*)?$/,
        use: [
          {
            loader: 'url-loader',
            options: {
              limit: 4096,
              fallback: {
                loader: 'file-loader',
                options: {
                  name: 'media/[name].[hash:8].[ext]'
                }
              }
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  },
  plugins: [
    new CleanWebpackPlugin(),
    new VueLoaderPlugin(),
    new webpack.HotModuleReplacementPlugin(),
    new webpack.ProgressPlugin(),
    new FriendlyErrorsWebpackPlugin(),
    new MiniCssExtractPlugin(
      {
        filename: "[name].[contenthash].css"
      }
    ),
    new HtmlWebpackPlugin(
      {
        template: './public/index.html'
      }
    ),
    new PreloadWebpackPlugin(
      {
        rel: 'preload',
        include: 'initial',
        fileBlacklist: [
          /\.map$/,
          /hot-update\.js$/
        ]
      }
    ),
    new PreloadWebpackPlugin(
      {
        rel: 'prefetch',
        include: 'asyncChunks'
      }
    ),
    new CopyWebpackPlugin(
      [
        {
          from: path.resolve(__dirname, 'public'),
          to: path.resolve(__dirname, 'dist'),
          toType: 'dir',
          ignore: [
            '.DS_Store'
          ]
        }
      ]
    )
  ]
}

package.json

{
  "license": "MIT",
  "scripts": {
    "serve": "webpack-dev-server --mode development",
    "build": "NODE_ENV=production webpack --mode production",
    "test": "jest"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@babel/core": "^7.5.5",
    "@babel/preset-env": "^7.5.5",
    "@vue/test-utils": "^1.0.0-beta.29",
    "autoprefixer": "^9.6.1",
    "babel-core": "^7.0.0-bridge.0",
    "babel-eslint": "^10.0.2",
    "babel-jest": "^24.8.0",
    "babel-loader": "^8.0.6",
    "clean-webpack-plugin": "^3.0.0",
    "copy-webpack-plugin": "^5.0.4",
    "css-loader": "^3.1.0",
    "cssnano": "^4.1.10",
    "eslint": "<6.0.0",
    "eslint-config-standard": "^12.0.0",
    "eslint-plugin-import": "^2.18.2",
    "eslint-plugin-node": "^9.1.0",
    "eslint-plugin-promise": "^4.2.1",
    "eslint-plugin-standard": "^4.0.0",
    "eslint-plugin-vue": "^5.2.3",
    "file-loader": "^4.1.0",
    "friendly-errors-webpack-plugin": "^1.7.0",
    "html-webpack-plugin": "^3.2.0",
    "jest": "^24.8.0",
    "jest-serializer-vue": "^2.0.2",
    "jest-transform-stub": "^2.0.0",
    "mini-css-extract-plugin": "^0.8.0",
    "node-sass": "^4.12.0",
    "postcss-loader": "^3.0.0",
    "preload-webpack-plugin": "^3.0.0-beta.3",
    "sass-loader": "^7.1.0",
    "style-resources-loader": "^1.2.1",
    "url-loader": "^2.1.0",
    "vue": "^2.6.10",
    "vue-jest": "^3.0.4",
    "vue-loader": "^15.7.1",
    "vue-style-loader": "^4.1.2",
    "vue-template-compiler": "^2.6.10",
    "webpack": "^4.39.0",
    "webpack-cli": "^3.3.6",
    "webpack-dev-server": "^3.7.2"
  }
}