How to build and deploy a Vue.js CRUD app with Cloud Firestore and Firebase

Written by Timothy Olakeke✏️

Frontend engineers today can easily build interfaces and implement their functionalities without the headache of integrating a backend or application programming interface (API). In this tutorial, we’ll demonstrate how to build a Vue.js application with create, read, update, delete (CRUD) functionalities and store data with Cloud Firestore. If you wish, you can also deploy this application to Firebase Hosting.

Firebase is a backend-as-a-service (BaaS) offering by Google that features databases, an ML kit, cloud functions, authentication, hosting, cloud storage, and more. Firebase abstracts the complexity of building a robust and scalable backend system, enabling developers to focus on building the client side of applications.

For our CRUD application, we’ll focus on using Cloud Firestore for data storage. Cloud Firestore is a NoSQL database that stores data in the form of documents, which are arranged into collections and support client- or server-side integration. Cloud Firestore documents contain various fields that can hold any data type and support very fast read or write.

Vue.js is a lightweight framework for building interactive user interfaces and single-page applications. We’ll use a design library called Element UI, which provides components to help developers build faster user interfaces.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, you’ll need:

• Basic knowledge of Vue.js
• Node and NPM installed
• A Google account
• Firebase tools CLI installed (alternatively, use npm install -g firebase-tools)
  • You’ll need to log in with your Google account using firebase login
• Vue.js CLI installed (or use npm install -g @vue/cli)
  • You can confirm your Vue.js CLI version using vue --version

Firebase setup

To get started with Firebase, create a Firebase project by following the steps below. (Note: Firebase projects are linked to Google Cloud Platform project.)

1. Visit the Firebase console and sign in with your Google account
2. Click “Add Project”
3. Click “Continue” to create the project (we don’t need analytics)
4. Click on the web icon </>
5. For the app nickname, enter whatever name you want and click “Next”
6. When your Firebase configuration is displayed, copy the contents within the scripts tag
7. Click on “Database,” then, under “Cloud Firestore,” click “Create database”
8. Set the security rules in test mode
9. Select a location and click “Next”
10. Create an employees collection and add some random documents (optional)

Vue setup

Setting up a Vue.js project will create the files and install the dependencies required to build a user interface. Execute the following command.

vue create crud-app

Configure your Vue.js project on the interactive screen that shows up. Simply select the default (Babel, ESLint) preset, which is the default configuration.

When done, you should see a new crud-app directory.

Change into the crud-app directory using cd crud-app or open the folder in your code editor.

To set up Element UI within the created Vue.js project using its Vue.js plugin, execute the following command to install Element UI in the crud-app directory.

vue add element

Configure the setup as follows:

1. Select Fully import
2. Since you don’t have to overwrite Element’s SCSS variables, input N
3. For locale , select en

We’re now done setting up Vue.js and Element UI.

To start the development server, execute the following.

npm run serve

You should see an output similar to this on your browser:

Configure Firebase with Vue.js

Before you can use Cloud Firestore, you need to set up the Firebase client on the Vue.js project.

Install the Firebase JS client and update your dependencies within the crud-app directory.

npm install firebase --save

Create a new file with the name firebaseConfig.js within the src directory with similar contents.

// src/firebaseConfig.js
import firebase from "firebase";

// Your web app's Firebase configuration
var firebaseConfig = {
  apiKey: "AIzaSyC9J2hIQ1XQFZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ",
  authDomain: "employee-crud-ZZZZZZZZZ.firebaseapp.com",
  databaseURL: "https://employee-crud-ZZZZZZ.firebaseio.com",
  projectId: "employee-crud-XXXXXXXX",
  storageBucket: "employee-crud-ZZZZZ.appspot.com",
  messagingSenderId: "8761301111111",
  appId: "1:87613015171:web:e60ee5139c5ZZZZZZZ"
};

// Initialize Firebase
export default firebase.initializeApp(firebaseConfig);

Replace the firebaseConfig object with what you copied earlier during the Firebase app setup.

Cloud Firestore CRUD methods in Vue.js

Let’s review some methods used for individual CRUD operations in the Vue.js app. Below are some truncated snippets to help explain individual methods.

You’ll need to import the initialized Firebase app and create an instance of Cloud Firestore.

import firebase from "./firebaseInit";
const db = firebase.firestore();

Create method

The method below creates a new document on the Cloud Firestore collection.

    createEmployee(name, date) {
        db.collection("employees")
          .add({ date: date, name: name })
          .then(() => {
            console.log("Document successfully written!");
          })
          .catch((error) => {
            console.error("Error writing document: ", error);
          });
    }

The values of name and date would be saved as a new document within the employees collection.

Read method

This method is used to fetch all documents from the Cloud Firestore collection.

    readEmployees() {
      let employeesData = [];
      db.collection("employees")
        .get()
        .then((querySnapshot) => {
          querySnapshot.forEach((doc) => {
           employeesData.push({
              id: doc.id,
              name: doc.data().name,
              date: doc.data().date,
            });
            console.log(doc.id, " => ", doc.data());
          });
          return employeesData
        })
        .catch((error) => {
          console.log("Error getting documents: ", error);
        });
    }

This loops through all documents in the Cloud Firestore collection and writes their data, along with id , to the employeesData variable.

Update method

The update method is used to edit an existing document on the Cloud Firestore collection.

    updateEmployee(id, name, date) {
      db.collection("employees")
        .doc(id)
        .update({
          name: name,
          date: date,
        })
        .then(() => {
          console.log("Document successfully updated!");
        })
        .catch((error) => {
          console.error("Error updating document: ", error);
        });
    }

The document with the passed id will be updated on the Cloud Firestore collection with the new values for name and date as passed during the method call.

Delete method

The delete method erases a document that exists on the Cloud Firestore collection.

    deleteEmployee(id) {
      db.collection("employees")
        .doc(id)
        .delete()
        .then(() => {
          console.log("Document successfully deleted!");
        })
        .catch((error) => {
          console.error("Error removing document: ", error);
        });
    }

The document with the passed id will be deleted on the Cloud Firestore collection.

Detailed source code

Vue.js uses single-file components, which allows you to build an entire user interface, including the layout, functionalities, and styles, in one .vue file.

For this tutorial, you’ll only need to modify the App.vue file.

Element UI provides a lot of reusable components, which makes building interfaces much faster. For our purposes, we’ll use a basic data table to list all the documents coming from the database.

A pop-over input is used to create and edit documents, while a button is used to trigger deletion.

<!-- src/App.vue -->
<template>
  <div>
    <el-popover
      placement="bottom"
      title="New Employee"
      width="200"
      trigger="click"
    >
      <el-input
        placeholder="John Doe"
        v-model="name"
        @blur="createEmployee(name, date)"
      ></el-input>
      <el-button round slot="reference" type="success"
        >Add New Employee</el-button
      >
    </el-popover>
    <el-table
      :data="
        employeesData.filter(
          (data) =>
            !search || data.name.toLowerCase().includes(search.toLowerCase())
        )
      "
      style="width: 100%;"
    >
      <el-table-column label="Date" prop="date"> </el-table-column>
      <el-table-column label="Name" prop="name"> </el-table-column>
      <el-table-column align="right">
        <template slot="header" :slot-scope="scope">
          <el-input v-model="search" size="mini" placeholder="Type to search" />
        </template>
        <template slot-scope="scope">
          <el-popover
            placement="bottom"
            title="Edit Employee"
            width="200"
            trigger="click"
          >
            <el-input
              placeholder="John Doe"
              v-model="scope.row.name"
              @blur="updateEmployee(scope.row.id, scope.row.name, date)"
            ></el-input>
            <el-button size="mini" slot="reference">Edit</el-button>
          </el-popover>
          <el-button
            size="mini"
            type="danger"
            @click="deleteEmployee(scope.row.id)"
            >Delete</el-button
          >
        </template>
      </el-table-column>
    </el-table>
  </div>
</template>

As explained earlier, our functions are all within the methods() section. The variables in use are also listed in the data(). Since we want to read all the documents once the application loads, we called the readEmployees() methods inside the mounted() lifecycle hook.

<!-- src/App.vue -->
<script>
import firebase from "./firebaseInit";
const db = firebase.firestore();
export default {
  data() {
    return {
      name: "",
      date: new Date().toISOString().slice(0, 10),
      employeesData: [],
      search: "",
    };
  },
  methods: {
    createEmployee(name, date) {
      if (name != "") {
        db.collection("employees")
          .add({ date: date, name: name })
          .then(() => {
            console.log("Document successfully written!");
            this.readEmployees();
          })
          .catch((error) => {
            console.error("Error writing document: ", error);
          });
        this.name = "";
      }
    },
    readEmployees() {
      this.employeesData = [];
      db.collection("employees")
        .get()
        .then((querySnapshot) => {
          querySnapshot.forEach((doc) => {
            this.employeesData.push({
              id: doc.id,
              name: doc.data().name,
              date: doc.data().date,
            });
            console.log(doc.id, " => ", doc.data());
          });
        })
        .catch((error) => {
          console.log("Error getting documents: ", error);
        });
    },
    updateEmployee(id, name, date) {
      db.collection("employees")
        .doc(id)
        .update({
          name: name,
          date: date,
        })
        .then(() => {
          console.log("Document successfully updated!");
          this.readEmployees();
        })
        .catch((error) => {
          // The document probably doesn't exist.
          console.error("Error updating document: ", error);
        });
    },
    deleteEmployee(id) {
      db.collection("employees")
        .doc(id)
        .delete()
        .then(() => {
          console.log("Document successfully deleted!");
          this.readEmployees();
        })
        .catch((error) => {
          console.error("Error removing document: ", error);
        });
    },
  },
  mounted() {
    this.readEmployees();
  },
};
</script>

Deploying the application

Firebase allows you to deploy static files. But first, you must build your assets.

Within the crud-app directory, run the following command.

npm run build && cd dist

Next, initialize Firebase and complete the following steps.

firebase init

1. Define “hosting” as the Firebase CLI feature you want to set up for the folder
2. For the project setup, select “Use an existing project option”
3. Navigate to and select the project created earlier
4. Set the public directory as: .
5. For “Configure as a single-page app (rewrite all urls to /index.html),” choose “Yes”
6. For “File ./index.html already exists. Overwrite?” select “No”

To deploy, execute the following command.

firebase deploy

Conclusion

You should now have the basic tools you need to build a simple application using Vue.js for the client side and Firebase for data storage and hosting. You can find the full source code on GitHub and also access a demo of the app.

To learn more, check out the following resources.

• Vue.js guide
• Element UI library
• Firebase documentation

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