34. State Management with Vuex

Chapter 34: State Management with Vuex

State management is an essential part of developing robust and scalable single page applications (SPA). In Vue.js, the Vuex library is used for this purpose. Vuex is a state management library that follows the Flux pattern, which was proposed by Facebook and is used in libraries such as Redux (React) and Ngrx (Angular).

The central idea of ​​the Flux pattern is that state is unidirectional; this means that actions occur in one direction and the state changes in response to those actions. This makes state management predictable and easy to track.

To get started with Vuex, we need to install it in our Vue.js project. This can be done using the npm or yarn package manager.

npm install vuex --save
or
yarn add vuex

Once installed, we can create a Vuex store. The Vuex store is the heart of state management with Vuex. It contains all of the application's state and provides methods for changing that state.

import Vue from 'vue';
import Vuex from 'vuex';

Vue.use(Vuex);

const store = new Vuex.Store({
  state: {
    // your status here
  },
  mutations: {
    // your mutations here
  },
  actions: {
    // your actions here
  },
  getters: {
    // your getters here
  }
});

There are four main parts to a Vuex store: state, mutations, actions and getters.

State is where we store the state of our application. It's a simple JavaScript object.

Mutations are functions that change the state. They are the only way to change state in Vuex. Mutations take the current state and a payload as arguments.

Actions are similar to mutations, but there are some important differences. Actions can be asynchronous, while mutations must be synchronous. Furthermore, actions do not change state directly. Instead, they commit mutations that alter the state.

Getters are functions that allow us to obtain parts of our state. They are like computed properties for our state.

When using Vuex, we must always change the state by committing mutations, not directly. This allows us to track all state changes, making the state predictable and easy to debug.

Also, with Vuex, we can divide our store into modules. Each module can have its own state, mutations, actions and getters. This allows us to manage state in a more modular way and keep our Vuex store organized as our application grows.

In summary, Vuex is a powerful state management library for Vue.js that helps us manage the state of our applications in a predictable and efficient way. With the right use of Vuex, we can build robust and scalable single page applications.

In the next chapter, we'll dive deeper into how to use Vuex in a real Vue.js project, including how to work with state, mutations, actions, getters, and modules.

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