Using Vue.js in Laravel 5.3
I'd leave Laravel the way it comes, with Webpack. This gives you the ability to add some good Webpack configuration. Plus gulp watch works inside the Homestead vagrant VM now since it will be using Webpack to watch the file changes. And also check out async components.
Now on to your question regarding separate Vue instances per page...let's start with app.js...
App.js
When you first install Laravel 5.3, you'll find an app.js entry point. Let's comment out the main Vue instance:
resources/assets/js/app.js
/** * First we will load all of this project's JavaScript dependencies which * include Vue and Vue Resource. This gives a great starting point for * building robust, powerful web applications using Vue and Laravel. */require('./bootstrap');/** * Next, we will create a fresh Vue application instance and attach it to * the page. Then, you may begin adding components to this application * or customize the JavaScript scaffolding to fit your unique needs. */Vue.component('example', require('./components/Example.vue'));// Let's comment this out, each page will be its own main Vue instance.//// const app = new Vue({// el: '#app'// });The app.js file still remains a place to for global stuff, so components added here are available (such as the example component seen above) to any page script that includes it.
Welcome Page Script
Now let's create a script that represents a Welcome Page:
resources/assets/js/pages/welcome.js
require('../app')import Greeting from '../components/Greeting.vue' var app = new Vue({ name: 'App', el: '#app', components: { Greeting }, data: { test: 'This is from the welcome page component' }})Blog Page Script
Now let's create another script that represents a Blog Page:
resources/assets/js/pages/blog.js
require('../app')import Greeting from '../components/Greeting.vue' var app = new Vue({ name: 'App', el: '#app', components: { Greeting }, data: { test: 'This is from the blog page component' }})Greeting Component
resources/assets/js/components/Greeting.vue
<template> <div class="greeting"> {{ message }} </div></template><script> export default { name: 'Greeting', data: () => { return { message: 'This is greeting component' } } }</script>Welcome Blade View
Let's update the welcome blade view that ships with Laravel:
<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <title>Laravel</title> </head> <body> <div id="app"> <example></example> @{{ pageMessage }} <greeting></greeting> </div> <script src="/js/welcome.js"></script> </body></html>The idea would be the same for the blog view.
Elixir
Now bring it all together in your gulp file using Elixir's ability to merge Webpack config options with its own (read more about that here):
gulpfile.js
const elixir = require('laravel-elixir');require('laravel-elixir-vue-2');/* |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Elixir Asset Management |-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Elixir provides a clean, fluent API for defining some basic Gulp tasks | for your Laravel application. By default, we are compiling the Sass | file for our application, as well as publishing vendor resources. | */elixir(mix => { var config = elixir.webpack.mergeConfig({ entry: { welcome: './resources/assets/js/pages/welcome.js', blog: './resources/assets/js/pages/blog.js' }, output: { filename: '[name].js' // Template based on keys in entry above } }); mix.sass('app.scss') .webpack('app.js', null, null, null, config);});Run gulp or gulp watch and you'll see both welcome.js and blog.js published.
Thoughts
I'm currently going the SPA route when it comes to "web apps" and just using Laravel as the backend API (or any other language/framework). I've seen some examples where Vue SPA is built in Laravel, but I really think it should be a completely seperate repo/project, independent of the backend. There's no Laravel/PHP templating views involved in an SPA, so build out the SPA separately. BTW, the SPA would have "page" components (which are usually called by VueRouter and of course would be made up of more nested components...see my example project link below).
However, for the "web site" I think Laravel is still a good choice for serving blade views and no need to go SPA for that. You can do what I've described in this answer. Also, you can connect your website to your webapp. On your website, you would have a "login" link that will take a user from the website to the webapp SPA to login. Your website remains SEO friendly (although there is good proof that Google is seeing content on SPA javascript sites as well).
For a look at an SPA approach, I've put up an example in Vue 2.0 here: https://github.com/prograhammer/example-vue-project (it works great, but still in progress).
Edit:
You may want to also checkout the Commons Chunk Plugin. This way browsers can cache some shared module dependencies separately. Webpack automatically can pull out shared imported dependencies and put them in a separate file. So that you have a both a common.js(shared stuff) and a welcome.js on a page. Then on another page you would again have common.js and blog.js and the browser can reuse the cached common.js.
If you want to incorporate vuejs into app.js using gulp then you can do it with elixir:
Firstly, you need laravel-elixir-browserify-official from npm:
npm install laravel-elixir-browserify-official
Then place the following in package.json:
"browserify": { "transform": [ "vueify", "babelify" ] }Your resources/assets/js/app.js file would then just need:
require('./bootstrap');The bootstrap.js file should be in the "resources/assets/js" folder. I can't remember if this got installed with passport in my application, so if you don't have it then laravel provided the following code for "bootstrap.js":
window._ = require('lodash');/** * We'll load jQuery and the Bootstrap jQuery plugin which provides support * for JavaScript based Bootstrap features such as modals and tabs. This * code may be modified to fit the specific needs of your application. */window.$ = window.jQuery = require('jquery');require('bootstrap-sass');/** * Vue is a modern JavaScript library for building interactive web interfaces * using reactive data binding and reusable components. Vue's API is clean * and simple, leaving you to focus on building your next great project. */window.Vue = require('vue');require('vue-resource');/** * We'll register a HTTP interceptor to attach the "CSRF" header to each of * the outgoing requests issued by this application. The CSRF middleware * included with Laravel will automatically verify the header's value. */Vue.http.interceptors.push((request, next) => { request.headers['X-CSRF-TOKEN'] = Laravel.csrfToken; next();});/** * Echo exposes an expressive API for subscribing to channels and listening * for events that are broadcast by Laravel. Echo and event broadcasting * allows your team to easily build robust real-time web applications. */// import Echo from "laravel-echo"// window.Echo = new Echo({// broadcaster: 'pusher',// key: 'your-pusher-key'// });Now in gulpfile.js you can use:
elixir(function(mix) { mix.browserify('app.js');});And in your HTML you would have:
...<div id="app"> @{{message}}</div>...<script type="text/javascript"> new Vue({ el: '#app', data: { message: 'Hello Vue.js!' } });</script>Now just run gulp
If you are not using elixir then you should be able to do a similar thing with the browserify or webpack packages from npm.
Edit
To answer your updated question, you can of course use vue.js for a single page. I personally use knockout for this stuff (I'm using vue because laravel passport uses it), but architecturally they are the same - they are MVVM libraries.
The point in MVVM is to bind your view to an underlying data model, so when one updates the other is automatically updated (i.e. updates in the dom automatically update the model and vice verser). Vue components are a simple way to reuse blocks of code, which is really good for creating widgets or complex components, but if you are simply looking to render data from a view model on to your page, then you would not usually need to create a component for that.
As for generating app.js, this entirely depends on your project. You cannot bind more than one view model to a view, so if you plan on using multiple view models in your project you would need to find a way to include the specific view model for your page. To achieve that I would probably remove the view model from app.js and keep the bootstrap and registered components there, then create separate view models that would need to be included on each page.
If you are on Laravel 5.5 and beyond, here is the best solution if you want to utilize the power of Blade but still enjoy reactive of VueJS