richardevcom

Posted on Aug 3, 2022 • Edited on Feb 15, 2023 • Originally published at Medium

Custom Vue 3 boilerplate - Vite, Pinia, Vue Router & Tailwind CSS

#vue #tailwindcss #beginners #vite

⚡Update: I've recreated TypeScript ready version of this boilerplate here.

A while back I realized I'm trashing my beautiful workspace with quite a few repetitive Vue web apps. Shortly before backing them up to never be seen again, it clicked - why not repurpose those reusable parts and simply stack them in a boilerplate? 🤔

I doubt that many devs like staging same project and repeat same initial commands again and again, therefore in this article "slash" tutorial I will swiftly go over how does one stack and configure a boilerplate.

Boilerplate stack

The stack of this boilerplate is focused on web app front end, therefore I'll keep it simple and use following packages:

Vite - dev tool for building and serving
Pinia - for storing
Vue Router - for dynamic routing
Tailwind CSS - for looks
Vite SVG loader (optional) - to easily import SVGs

Prerequisite

Before we start, I'm assuming you're somewhat acquainted with command line and have Node.js installed. If not - download it here. To check if it's installed, simply run node -v command.

Quickstart - Vue, Router & Store

Let's begin by initializing our boilerplate project.

npm init vue@latest

Now enter the project name. I'll be using vue3-boilerplate. On feature prompt choose to install Pinia and Vue Router.

✔ Project name: vue3-boilerplate
...
✔ Add Vue Router for Single Page Application development? Yes
✔ Add Pinia for state management? Yes

It's time to move into our project folder, install packages and run our boilerplate in development environment.

cd vue3-boilerplate
npm install
npm run dev

You should be seeing on your local development environment http://127.0.0.1:5173 this example page:

You can learn more about building or serving your app in this guide. Oh, and read more about Pinia here. It is very similar to Vuex.

Add Tailwind CSS

👏 Great, we got our base, now we need the looks. Following this guide we are installing Tailwind CSS, its dependencies and then initializing configuration file.

npm install -D tailwindcss postcss autoprefixer
npx tailwindcss init -p

In your project root you'll now find tailwind.config.js file - let's open it and add our template paths:

module.exports = {
   content: [
      "./index.html",
      "./src/**/*.{vue,js,ts,jsx,tsx}",
   ],
   ...
}

Next we will need to load @tailwind directives, so let's create tailwind.css in our /src/assets folder with following directives:

@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;

Now let's load this CSS file by importing it in the very top of /src/assets/main.css file:

@import "./tailwind.css";
...

Since we already import /src/assets/main.css file in /src/main.js, we are good to use Tailwind's utility classes in our project.
Let's test it out by adding some classes inside /src/views/AboutView.vue in <h1> tag:

<template>
   <div class="about">
      <h1 class="text-xl font-medium text-white">This is an about page</h1>
   </div>
</template>

We can also define our CSS properties separately below. To do so, we will need to install SASS package and PostCSS plugin - sass & postcss-import:

npm i -D sass postcss-import

Now let's use @apply with our utility classes:

<template>
   ...
   <h1>This is an about page</h1>
   ...
</template>
<style lang="scss">
   .about {
      @apply lg:min-h-screen lg:flex lg:items-center;

      h1 {
         @apply text-xl font-medium text-white;
      }
   }
</style>

🎉 Awesome! We have our core and we have our looks. What else could we add? 🤔

Add SVG loader (optional)

I like my SVG like I like my app - Component-Driven.🥁 It just so happens that our newly stacked boilerplate can easily import SVG imagery, but there is a catch - you'll have to use it as component, meaning you'll manually have to add SVG code within template tags and import it like that.

Luckily there is this vite-svg-loader package that basically allows you to simply import your .svg files within Vue template as components. Let's proceed by adding it to our boilerplate:

npm install vite-svg-loader --save-dev

Now add this plugin in our vite.config.js configuration file:

...
import svgLoader from 'vite-svg-loader'
export default defineConfig({
   plugins: [vue(), svgLoader()],
   ...
})

Lastly, to test it out I'm going to change that Vue.js logo code to Vite.js in /src/assets/logo.svg to this one and save it:

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" viewBox="0 0 2454.32 2457.41"><defs><linearGradient id="a" x1="285.11" y1="1790.44" x2="285.7" y2="1789.74" gradientTransform="matrix(2454.32, 0, 0, -2187.24, -699180.9, 3916163.49)" gradientUnits="userSpaceOnUse"><stop offset="0" stop-color="#41d1ff"/><stop offset="1" stop-color="#bd34fe"/></linearGradient><linearGradient id="b" x1="285.22" y1="1790.33" x2="285.29" y2="1789.46" gradientTransform="matrix(1125.42, 0, 0, -2051.66, -319596.68, 3673197.31)" gradientUnits="userSpaceOnUse"><stop offset="0" stop-color="#ffea83"/><stop offset="0.08" stop-color="#ffdd35"/><stop offset="1" stop-color="#ffa800"/></linearGradient></defs><path d="M2464.14,381.6,1311.22,2443.21c-23.8,42.57-85,42.82-109.12.46L26.33,381.79C0,335.63,39.47,279.72,91.78,289.08L1245.93,495.37a62.88,62.88,0,0,0,22.27,0l1130-206C2450.35,279.87,2490,335.35,2464.14,381.6Z" transform="translate(-17.94 -17.87)" style="fill:url(#a)"/><path d="M1795.71,18.48,942.53,185.66a31.33,31.33,0,0,0-25.25,28.9L864.8,1101a31.33,31.33,0,0,0,29.41,33.14,31.77,31.77,0,0,0,8.91-.75l237.54-54.82a31.32,31.32,0,0,1,37.73,36.79l-70.57,345.59a31.33,31.33,0,0,0,39.8,36.24l146.72-44.57a31.34,31.34,0,0,1,39.79,36.32L1222,2031.73c-7,33.95,38.14,52.47,57,23.36l12.59-19.44L1986.77,648.19c11.65-23.23-8.44-49.72-33.94-44.79l-244.52,47.18a31.33,31.33,0,0,1-36-39.44L1831.86,57.91a31.34,31.34,0,0,0-36.14-39.43Z" transform="translate(-17.94 -17.87)" style="fill:url(#b)"/></svg>

Then in /src/App.vue file I'll import it as SVG component and replace it with <img class="logo" />.

<script setup>
   ...
   import LogoSVG from './assets/logo.svg?component'
</script>
<template>
   ...
   <LogoSVG alt="Vite logo" class="logo" />
   ...
</template>

🎉Congratulations!

You are a proud owner of your very own boilerplate. 👏

What's next?

You would now want to create an easily pull-able starter kit - for example, in Github - so your boilerplate is always one command away. I actually did just that - you can pull my version of boilerplate here or simply pull it:

npm i @richardev/vue3-boilerplate

Finally, I want to share this list of some useful Vue.js related packages to add to your boilerplate:
NuxtJS - Vue.js Framework
Vue Meta - for Web App SEO
VeeValidate - form validation
Vue Toastification - alerts a.k. toasts

If you have ideas on what to add or remove in this boilerplate, tips on configuring it or you simply have an issue setting it up - I'll appreciate if you reach out in the comments below. 👋