@marcoborsoi/valtech-ui v0.0.2

Valtech UI Component Library

Inspired by https://github.com/wuruoyun/vue-component-lib-starter

Setup

You can use npmor yarn.

# install dependencies
yarn install

# build the library, available under dist
yarn build

# build the storybook app, available under storybook-static
yarn build:storybook

# start the storybook app with hot reload
yarn storybook

You may use Netlify to auto build and deloy the doc app like this project does.

Develop and test locally

In order to develop and test your component, create stories in src/components/[component_name]/[component_name].stories.ts, as shown by the example components.

If you want to test the library in a Vue3 app locally:

1. In the root folder of this library, run yarn link. This will create a symbolic link to the library.
2. In the root folder of your client app, run yarn link @valtech/valtech-ui. This will add the symbolic link to the node_modules folder in your client app.
3. You can now import @valtech/valtech-ui in your client app.

There is no need to add @valtech/valtech-ui to your client app's dependency in this case.

If you made changes to the library, you will need to rebuild the library. Your Vue3 app shall hot reload when the building of library is completed.

How it works

Components

The library is a Vue plugin. The install function in index.ts registers all components under components to Vue globably.

The components are also exported by index.ts so that the client app can import them individually and register them locally, instead of using the library as a plugin. This may be a better option if the client app only use a small set of components in your library.

Utilities and constants

The library includes example utilities and constants. They are also exported in index.ts. The client app may use them as below:

<script lang="ts">
import { MyConstants, MyUtil } from '@valtech/valtech-ui`'

export default {
  data () {
    return {
      magicNum: MyConstants.MAGIC_NUM
    }
  },
  methods: {
    add (a:number, b:number) {
      return MyUtil.add(a, b)
    }
  }
}
</script>

Styling

Individual compopnent may have styles defined in its .vue file or in dedicated file in the same directory. They will be processed, combined and minified into dist/valtech-ui.css, which is included in the exports list in package.json.

If you have library level styles shared by all components in the library, you may add them to src/assets/main.scss. This file is imported in index.ts, therefore the processed styles are also included into dist/valtech-ui.css.

The client app shall import valtech-ui.css, usually in the entry file:

import '@valtech/valtech-ui/dist/valtech-ui.css'

Third-party dependencies

Third-party libraries used by you library may bloat up the size of your library, if you simply add them to the dependencies in package.json.

The following are some strategies to reduce the size of your library:

Externalization

If you expect the client app of your library may also need the same dependency, you may externalize the dependency. For example, to exclude LIB_123 from your library build artifact, in vite.config.ts, you may have

module.exports = defineConfig({
    rollupOptions: {
      external: ['vue', /LIB_123\/.+/]
    }
  }
})

The dependency to be externalized may be declared as peer dependency in your library.

Cherry picking

If you don't expect the client app of your library also needing the same dependency, you may embed cherry-picked functions. For example, to embed the fill function of popular library lodash, import the fill function like the following:

import fill from 'lodash/fill'

Even with tree-shaking, the codes being brought into your library may still be large, as the function may have its own dependencies.

Note that import { fill } from 'lodash' or import _ from 'lodash' will not work and will embed the whole lodash library.

Finally, if your client app also use lodash and you don't want lodash to be in both the client app and your libraries, even after cherry-picking, you may consider cherry-picking in component library and re-export them as utils for client to consume, so that the client does not need to depend on lodash, therefore avoiding duplication.

Type generation

In tsconfig.json, the following options instructs tsc to emit declaration (.d.ts files) only, as vite build handles the .js file generation. The generated .d.ts files are sent to dist/types folder.

"compilerOptions": {
  "declaration": true,
  "emitDeclarationOnly": true,
  "declarationDir": "./dist/types"
}

In package.json, the line below locates the generated types for library client.

"types": "./dist/types/index.d.ts",

In vite.config.ts, build.emptyOutDir is set to false and rimraf is used instead to remove the dist folder before the build. This is to avoid the dist/types folder generated by tsc being deleted when running vite build.

Configuration

TypeScript

In tsconfig.json, set the following as recommended by Vite (since esbuild is used). However, enableing this option leads to https://github.com/vitejs/vite/issues/5814. The workaround is to also enable compilerOptions.skipLibCheck.

"compilerOptions": {
  "isolatedModules": true
}

In tsconfig.json, set the following to address Issue #32. The solution is from https://github.com/johnsoncodehk/volar/discussions/592.

"compilerOptions": {
  "types": [
    "vite/client"
  ]
}

Dependencies

In package.json, Vue is declared in both peerDependencies and devDependencies. The former requires the client app to add these dependencies, and the later makes it easier to setup this library by simply running yarn install.