How to Set Up, Build, and Deploy Native Apps with Vue

Introduction

Vue Native is a Javascript framework that is designed to deliver cross-platform mobile native applications. It is inspired by the React Native project.

Vue Native was originally a fork from React-Vue, a compiler that gave developers the ability to write Vue and React in the same codebase.

In this tutorial, you will build an application to learn about the APIs and components available in Vue Native.

The application that you build will display trending gifs on the Giphy platform. The Giphy API will be used to get the associated gif image, title, and type for each trending gif. The image and details will be displayed using Vue Native components like ScrollView, Text, and Image.

Prerequisites

To complete this tutorial, you will need:

• Node.js installed locally, which you can accomplish by following How to Install Node.js and Create a Local Development Environment. This tutorial requires Node 6.0.0 or greater.
• A Node package manager like npm (which comes packaged with Node) or Yarn. This tutorial will use npm. If you prefer to use yarn, you will need to substitute those steps.
• Some knowledge of JavaScript and Vue is also helpful. You can follow the official Vue documentation to become familiar with some fo the core Vue concepts and components.
• To use the Giphy API, you’ll need to create or log in to a Giphy account.

Expo will be used to build and run the new application. Expo is an open-source tool-chain built around React Native for building Android and iOS applications. It provides access to the system’s functionality like the Camera and Storage.

If you don’t already have expo-cli installed globally, you can run the following in your terminal:

npm install --global expo-cli@3.20.1

Step 1 — Setting Up the Project

First, you will need to set up a project and install some dependencies. The Vue Native CLI will be used to bootstrap the application.

Initialize a new project for vue-gifs by running the following in your terminal with npx:

npx vue-native-cli@0.1.1 init vue-gifs

Running this command will bootstrap an application for this project using the Expo CLI.

To build for iOS and Android platforms, update the scripts object in the package.json file:

{
  "name": "vue-gifs",
  "main": "node_modules/expo/AppEntry.js",
  "private": true,
  "scripts": {
    ...
    "build:ios": "expo build:ios",
    "build:android": "expo build:android",
  },
  ...
}

Then update the sdkVersion in the app.json file to match the Expo version in your package.json. Open the app.json file and update it like the snippet below:

{
  "expo": {
    "name": "vue-gifs",
    "description": "This project is really great.",
    ...
    "sdkVersion": "37.0.3",
    ...
  }
}

Now that you’ve set up the project, you’re ready to start testing the application.

Step 2 — Testing on Mobile

To test the application on mobile, the Expo CLI provides various methods to test the application. The first is using a URL that is generated after running the application. This URL can be visited on your mobile browser to test the application.

Ensure that you are in the vue-gifs project directory and run npm start to start the application:

npm start

Expo typically starts your application on :19002 so visit http://localhost:19002 to view the Expo Dev Tools in your browser. Within the Dev Tools you can send the preview link as an SMS or email to your mobile phone:

You can select any of the three connection options: an external tunnel, LAN, or local connection. For the local connection, your mobile phone and work PC have to be connected to the same network, but the tunnel will work in all cases.

The next testing method that you can use is to download the Expo Mobile App. It can be found on both the Apple App Store and the Android Play Store. On iOS, after installing the app open up your camera and scan the QR code from the browser version of the application to run it on your phone. On Android, you can use the Expo app directly to scan the QR code and run the application. Your application will then display on your mobile device.

Another option for testing on a mobile device is using an emulator or simulator. Using Android Studio or Xcode on macOS, you can boot emulators or simulators for their respective platforms. Download and install the tool for the platform of choice: Xcode for iOS and Android studio for Android. After installation, run the command to start the application:

For iOS, run:

npm run ios

For Android, run:

npm run android

Now that you’ve explored different options for testing the app, you are ready to build the application.

Step 3 — Creating a Giphy Application

The next step is to create an app on the Giphy Developer platform.

On your developer account dashboard, there is a Create App button. Click the button, and you will be presented with a choice between an SDK or an API. For the purposes of this tutorial, API will suffice.

Then, click Next Step and then Create App. Fill in the details about your application.

After creating the app, your new application will be displayed on your dashboard with an API key. This key will be used when making requests to Giphy.

Giphy’s Javascript SDK will be used to make requests to the Giphy service itself. Run this command from the vue-gifs directory to install the package:

npm install --save giphy-js-sdk-core@1.0.6

Now, your project is ready to consume the Giphy APIs with the help of this SDK.

Step 4 — Building the App Component

In this step you will build the app component. Open the App.vue file in the root folder and update it like the snippet below:

<template>
    <view>
        <scroll-view class="scroll-view">
            <!-- TODO: Create gif item and header -->
            <view class="loading-container" :style="{flex: 1, justifyContent: 'center'}" v-if="loading">
              <activity-indicator size="large" color="#0000ff"></activity-indicator>
            </view>
        </scroll-view>
    </view>
</template>

<script>
  import Giphy from 'giphy-js-sdk-core';
  const client = Giphy('GIPHY_API_KEY');

  export default {
    name: 'App',
    data() {
      return {
        gifs: [],
        loading: true,
      };
    },
    async created() {
      const response = await client.trending('gifs', {limit: 20});
      this.gifs = response.data;
    },
  };
</script>

<style>
    .scroll-view {
        padding-top: 20px;
        padding-bottom: 30px;
    }
    .loading-container {
        height: 600px;
    }
</style>

In the snippet above, the App component renders a scrollview component that houses the component’s elements. It only displays an activityindicator; this will be replaced by the list of gifs when the call to the API is complete.

The Giphy client is instantiated using the API key obtained from the developers dashboard. Be sure to replace the placeholder string with the API key. Calling the trending method makes a call to the Giphy trending endpoint. The first provided parameter is gifs: this indicates which trending items should be returned, either gifs or stickers. The second parameter is an object providing optional parameters like the limit, offset, rating, and fmt (format).

The only parameter used in this code is the limit parameter, which restricts the results to 20 items. This call is made in the created lifecycle of the component. Finally, the gif list is used to render the returned results.

After reloading, the application should display the activity indicator:

Now that you’ve built the app component, you are ready to build the gif item component.

Step 5 — Building the Gif Item Component

Each gif item will be displayed using a View component. The View component is an important building block in the framework. It supports layout using flexbox, styling, and accessibility. Each item will display the gif, title, and type.

Create a folder named components in the root folder. Within the components directory, create a file named GifItem.vue and add the following code:

<template>
  <view class="container">
    <image class="img" :source="{uri: `${gif.images.original.url}`}" style="max-width:100%;"/>
    <text class="title">{{titleCase(gif.title)}}</text>
  </view>
</template>

<script>
export default {
  name: "GifItem",
  props: ["gif"],
  methods: {
    titleCase(text) {
      const textArray = text.split(" ");
      return textArray
        .map(text => {
          const trimmedText = text.trim();
          return `${trimmedText[0].toUpperCase()}${trimmedText.slice(1)}`;
        })
        .join(" ");
    }
  }
};
</script>

<style>
.container {
  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  align-items: center;
  margin-bottom: 30px;
  position: relative;
}
.img {
  height: 200px;
  width: 300px;
}
.title {
  font-size: 14px;
  font-weight: 500;
  margin-top: 7px;
}
</style>

The Image component will be used to display the source of each gif, and the Text component will be used to display the gif title. The Image component takes a source prop, which is an object with a uri property.

The titleCase method takes the title of each gif and returns the text in the title case, capitalizing the first letter of each word in the text. The GifItem component will take a single prop gif.

Update the App.vue file to include the new GifItem using the the snippet below:

<template>
    <view>
        <scroll-view class="scroll-view">
            <gif-item v-for="gif in gifs" :gif="gif" :key="gif.id" v-if="!loading"/>
            <view class="loading-container" :style="{flex: 1, justifyContent: 'center'}" v-if="loading">
                <activity-indicator size="large" color="#0000ff"></activity-indicator>
            </view>
        </scroll-view>
    </view>
</template>

<script>
  import Giphy from 'giphy-js-sdk-core';
  const client = Giphy('GIPHY_API_KEY');

  import GifItem from './components/GifItem';

  export default {
    name: 'App',
    data() {
      return {
        gifs: [],
        loading: true
      };
    },
    async created() {
      const response = await client.trending('gifs', {limit: 20});
      this.gifs = response.data;
      this.loading = false;
    },
    components: {GifItem}
  };
</script>

<style>
    .scroll-view {
        padding-top: 20px;
        padding-bottom: 30px;
    }
    .loading-container {
        height: 600px;
    }
</style>

When you open the application in the Expo app, the app will display gifs stacked in a list.

If your local application is not displaying a list of gifs, ensure that your code matches the snippets in this tutorial and that your Giphy API key is valid.

Step 6 — Building the Header Component

Now that the application can retrieve and display a list of trending gifs let’s include a header to give the application context. The View component will be used to create an area that will act as the header for the application.

Create a file called header.vue within the components directory and update it with the code below:

<template>
    <view class="header-container">
        <text class="header">Trending</text>
    </view>
</template>

<script>
  export default {
    name: 'header.vue'
  };
</script>

<style scoped>
    .header-container {
        background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.05);
        display: flex;
        justify-content: center;
        padding-top: 15px;
        padding-bottom: 15px;
        border-bottom-color: aquamarine;
        border-bottom-width: 1px;
        margin-top: 20px;
    }
    .header {
        font-size: 16px;
        color: black;
        opacity: 0.8;
        font-weight: 600;
        text-align: center;
    }
</style>

Now add the header component to the App component. This will display a header at the top of the application. Update the App.vue file to include the Header component:

<template>
    <view>
        <header/>
        <scroll-view class="scroll-view">
            ...
        </scroll-view>
    </view>
</template>

<script>
  import Giphy from 'giphy-js-sdk-core';
  const client = Giphy('GIPHY_API_KEY');

  import GifItem from './components/GifItem';
  import Header from './components/header';

  export default {
    name: 'App',
    data() {
     ...
    },
    async created() {
      ...
    },
    components: {GifItem, Header}
  };
</script>

<style>
  ...
</style>

After the application refreshes, the header will be added to the top of the application.

The components provided by Vue Native have done all of the work required to render, order, and display the list of trending gifs.

Step 7 — Deploying the Application on Android (Optional)

The final step in this tutorial is to deploy the application to the Android Play store.

First, you will need to update app.json to include Android specific properties. Open the app.json file and update the file to include the android field:

{
  "expo": {
    ...
    "android": {
      "package": "com.vue.gifs"
    }
  }
}

The android.package field is a unique value that will represent your package in the app store. You can read more on the package naming convention here.

After updating the file, run this command in your terminal window from the vue-gifs directory:

npm run build:android

This command will present you with a prompt, asking you to provide a keystore or to generate a new one. If you have an existing keystore, you can select this option or let Expo generate one for your application.

After completion, a download link will be generated for your application, clicking on this link will trigger a download for your APK.

To deploy the downloaded APK to the Android Play Store, visit the Play Console to create an account. You will need to pay a registration fee before proceeding. When registration is complete, visit this page and follow the steps to upload your application to the Play Store.

Conclusion

Vue Native is a useful framework to build applications for mobile platforms using Vue.js. Vue Native compiles to React and uses components provided by React Native. At as the time of writing, some of its components require that you write JSX with the actual React Native components. Since Vue Native works with React Native, you can follow the official React Native documentation to learn more about it.