Vue.js: Up and Running

Appendix B. Vue from React

If you’ve used React before, you’re probably already familiar with a lot of the concepts in Vue. I’ve compiled a list of some of the similarities and differences between the two frameworks in this appendix. This section is fairly heavily example based: it’s a lot easier to understand the differences and similarities from examples than from me writing about it!

Getting Started

Both Vue and React have similar tools that you can use to set up a simple app. React has create-react-app, which sets up a webpack configuration to build a React app and then hides the configuration from you. Vue has vue-cli, which has various templates that you can use to install Vue with webpack, Browserify, or without any build tool at all. The vue-cli templates are also configurable and will set up vue-router, unit testing, and functional testing (but not vuex) if you want it to—something that create-react-app will not provide.

You can also build your own templates to use with vue-cli. Check out Appendix A for more information on vue-cli and the templates available to you.

There’s also a difference in setup when you want just a simple setup. React doesn’t work great without a build tool, because you can’t write JSX without a parser; it’s not supported in the browser. Nearly every React project uses webpack, and Browserify support is limited. Vue doesn’t require JSX (although you can use it if you want it), so it’s possible to use it in the browser without a build tool. Most ...