How to build and deploy a Vue.js app with Cloud Firestore and Vuefire

Editor’s note: This post was updated 2 March 2022 to include Vuefire as a method for configuring Vue 3 apps with Firebase, and improve the configuration of the sample Vue and Firebase deployment. 

Frontend engineers today can easily build interfaces and implement their functionalities without the headache of developing a backend or application programming interface (API).

Vue.js is a lightweight framework for building interactive user interfaces and single-page applications. In this tutorial, we’ll demonstrate two ways to build a Vue.js application with create, read, update, delete (CRUD) functionalities and store data with Cloud Firestore. Here’s the full list of what we’ll cover:

• Creating our Vue.js app
• Setting up the Firebase project and Cloud Firestore
• Configuring Firebase with Vue.js
• Creating the UI with Element UI
• Integrating Cloud Firestore CRUD methods in our Vue.js app
• Integrating Vuefire in our Vue.js app
• Deploying our Vue.js app

If you wish, you can also deploy this application to Firebase.

What is Firebase?

Firebase is a backend-as-a-service (BaaS) offering from Google that features databases, an ML kit, cloud functions, authentication, hosting, cloud storage, and more. Firebase abstracts the complexity of building a robust and scalable backend system, enabling developers to focus on building the client side of applications.

What is Cloud Firestore?

For our CRUD application, we will focus on using Cloud Firestore for data storage. Cloud Firestore is a NoSQL database that stores data in the form of documents, which are arranged into collections and support client- or server-side integration. Cloud Firestore documents contain various fields that can hold any data type and support very fast read or write operations.

What is Vuefire?

Vuefire is a lightweight wrapper that handles realtime binding between Vue/Vuex and Firebase databases, such as real-time databases or Cloud Firestore. It has some inbuilt logic that always keeps local data in sync with remote Firebase databases.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, you’ll need:

• Basic knowledge of Vue.js
• Node and npm installed
• A Google account
• Vue.js CLI installed (npm install -g @vue/cli)
  • You can confirm your Vue.js CLI version using vue --version
• Firebase tools CLI installed for deployment (npm install -g firebase-tools)
  • You’ll need to log in with your Google account using firebase login

Creating our Vue.js app

Setting up a Vue project will create the files and install the dependencies required to build a user interface. Execute the following command:

vue create crud-app

Configure your Vue project on the interactive screen that shows up. Simply select the default (Babel, ESLint) preset for the default configuration.

When done, you should see a new crud-app directory.

Change into the crud-app directory using cd crud-app or open the folder in your code editor.

Add Element UI

To set up Element UI within the created Vue.js project, we’ll use its Vue.js plugin. Execute the following command to install Element UI in the crud-app directory.

vue add element

Configure the setup as follows:

1. Select Fully import
2. Since you don’t have to overwrite Element’s SCSS variables, input N
3. For locale, select en
   

We’re now done setting up Vue.js and Element UI.

To start the development server, execute the following.

npm run serve

You should see an output similar to this on your browser:

Now let’s proceed to setting up and integrating the Firebase backend.

Setting up the Firebase project and Cloud Firestore

To get started with Firebase, create a Firebase project by following the steps below. (Note: Firebase projects are linked to a Google Cloud Platform project.)

1. Visit the Firebase console and sign in with your Google account
2. Click Add Project
3. Click Continue to create the project (you can turn off analytics as we don’t need them for a demo)
   
4. Click the web icon, </>
5. For the app nickname, enter whatever name you want and click Next
6. When your Firebase configuration is displayed, copy the contents within the scripts tag
   

Create the Firestore database

1. Click Database, and then under Cloud Firestore, click Create database
2. Set the security rules in test mode
   
3. Select a location and click Next
4. Create an employees collection and add some random documents (optional)
   

Configuring Firebase with Vue.js

Before you can use Cloud Firestore, you need to set up the Firebase client on the Vue project.
Install the Firebase JS client and update your dependencies within the crud-app directory.

npm install firebase --save

Create a new file with the name firebaseInit.js within the src directory with similar contents.

// src/firebaseInit.js
import firebase from "firebase";

// Your web app's Firebase configuration
var firebaseConfig = {
  apiKey: "AIzaSyC9J2hIQ1XQFZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ",
  authDomain: "employee-crud-ZZZZZZZZZ.firebaseapp.com",
  databaseURL: "https://employee-crud-ZZZZZZ.firebaseio.com",
  projectId: "employee-crud-XXXXXXXX",
  storageBucket: "employee-crud-ZZZZZ.appspot.com",
  messagingSenderId: "8761301111111",
  appId: "1:87613015171:web:e60ee5139c5ZZZZZZZ"
};

// Initialize Firebase
export default firebase.initializeApp(firebaseConfig);

Replace the firebaseConfig object with what you copied earlier during the Firebase app setup.

Creating the UI with Element UI

Vue.js uses single-file components, which allow you to build an entire user interface — including the layout, functionalities, and styles — in one .vue file. For this tutorial, you’ll only need to modify the src/App.vue file. You can clear the contents of the App.vue file now, as this will be replaced shortly.

We will use a design library called Element UI, which provides a lot of reusable components that make building interfaces much faster. For our purposes, we’ll use a basic data table to list all the documents coming from the database.

A popover input is used to create and edit documents, while a button is used to trigger deletion.

<template>
  <!-- eslint-disable -->
  <div>
    <el-popover
      placement="bottom"
      title="New Employee"
      width="200"
      trigger="click"
    >
      <el-input
        placeholder="John Doe"
        v-model="name"
        @blur="createEmployee(name, date)"
      ></el-input>
      <el-button round slot="reference" type="success"
        >Add New Employee</el-button
      >
    </el-popover>
    <el-table
      :data="
        employeesData.filter(
          (data) =>
            !search || data.name.toLowerCase().includes(search.toLowerCase())
        )
      "
      style="width: 100%;"
    >
      <el-table-column label="Date" prop="date"> </el-table-column>
      <el-table-column label="Name" prop="name"> </el-table-column>
      <el-table-column align="right">
        <template slot="header" :slot-scope="scope">
          <el-input v-model="search" size="mini" placeholder="Type to search" />
        </template>
        <template slot-scope="scope">
          <el-popover
            placement="bottom"
            title="Edit Employee"
            width="200"
            trigger="click"
          >
            <el-input
              placeholder="John Doe"
              v-model="scope.row.name"
              @blur="updateEmployee(scope.row.id, scope.row.name, date)"
            ></el-input>
            <el-button size="mini" slot="reference">Edit</el-button>
          </el-popover>
          <el-button
            size="mini"
            type="danger"
            @click="deleteEmployee(scope.row.id)"
            >Delete</el-button
          >
        </template>
      </el-table-column>
    </el-table>
  </div>
</template>

<script>

export default {
  name: 'app',
  data(){
    return {
      name: '',
      employeesData: []
    }
  }
}
</script>

The interface should now look like the screenshot below.

Integrating Cloud Firestore CRUD methods in our Vue.js app

In this section, we will integrate Cloud Firestore for CRUD operations in our Vue.js app. Below are some truncated snippets that explain how this method works.

You’ll need to import the initialized Firebase app and create an instance of Cloud Firestore in src/App.vue.

import firebase from "./firebaseInit";
const db = firebase.firestore();

create method

The method below creates a new document on the Cloud Firestore collection.

    createEmployee(name, date) {
        db.collection("employees")
          .add({ date: date, name: name })
          .then(() => {
            console.log("Document successfully written!");
          })
          .catch((error) => {
            console.error("Error writing document: ", error);
          });
    }

The values of name and date are saved as a new document within the employees collection.

read method

This method is used to fetch all documents from the Cloud Firestore collection.

    readEmployees() {
      let employeesData = [];
      db.collection("employees")
        .get()
        .then((querySnapshot) => {
          querySnapshot.forEach((doc) => {
           employeesData.push({
              id: doc.id,
              name: doc.data().name,
              date: doc.data().date,
            });
            console.log(doc.id, " => ", doc.data());
          });
          return employeesData
        })
        .catch((error) => {
          console.log("Error getting documents: ", error);
        });
    }
>

This loops through all documents in the Cloud Firestore collection and writes their data and id to the employeesData variable.

update method

The update method is used to edit an existing document in the Cloud Firestore collection.

    updateEmployee(id, name, date) {
      db.collection("employees")
        .doc(id)
        .update({
          name: name,
          date: date,
        })
        .then(() => {
          console.log("Document successfully updated!");
        })
        .catch((error) => {
          console.error("Error updating document: ", error);
        });
    }

The document with the passed id will be updated on the Cloud Firestore collection with the new values for name and date that we passed during the method call.

delete method

The delete method erases a document that exists in the Cloud Firestore collection.

    deleteEmployee(id) {
      db.collection("employees")
        .doc(id)
        .delete()
        .then(() => {
          console.log("Document successfully deleted!");
        })
        .catch((error) => {
          console.error("Error removing document: ", error);
        });
    }

The document with the passed ID will be deleted from the Cloud Firestore collection.

As explained earlier, our functions are all contained within the methods() section, and the variables in use are listed in the data() section. We then call the readEmployees() method inside the mounted() lifecycle Hook because we want to read all the documents once the application loads.

Now, you can update the <script> section of the src/App.vue file with the following snippet:

<!-- src/App.vue -->
<! ... >
<script>
import firebase from "./firebaseInit";
const db = firebase.firestore();
export default {
  data() {
    return {
      name: "",
      date: new Date().toISOString().slice(0, 10),
      employeesData: [],
      search: "",
    };
  },
  methods: {
    createEmployee(name, date) {
      if (name != "") {
        db.collection("employees")
          .add({ date: date, name: name })
          .then(() => {
            console.log("Document successfully written!");
            this.readEmployees();
          })
          .catch((error) => {
            console.error("Error writing document: ", error);
          });
        this.name = "";
      }
    },
    readEmployees() {
      this.employeesData = [];
      db.collection("employees")
        .get()
        .then((querySnapshot) => {
          querySnapshot.forEach((doc) => {
            this.employeesData.push({
              id: doc.id,
              name: doc.data().name,
              date: doc.data().date,
            });
            console.log(doc.id, " => ", doc.data());
          });
        })
        .catch((error) => {
          console.log("Error getting documents: ", error);
        });
    },
    updateEmployee(id, name, date) {
      db.collection("employees")
        .doc(id)
        .update({
          name: name,
          date: date,
        })
        .then(() => {
          console.log("Document successfully updated!");
          this.readEmployees();
        })
        .catch((error) => {
          // The document probably doesn't exist.
          console.error("Error updating document: ", error);
        });
    },
    deleteEmployee(id) {
      db.collection("employees")
        .doc(id)
        .delete()
        .then(() => {
          console.log("Document successfully deleted!");
          this.readEmployees();
        })
        .catch((error) => {
          console.error("Error removing document: ", error);
        });
    },
  },
  mounted() {
    this.readEmployees();
  },
};
</script>

And we’re done!

Integrating Vuefire in our Vue.js app

Vuefire provides an alternative way to bind to our Cloud Firestore database. With this method, you provide the key of the state to bind to, and Vuefire takes care of the rest!

Vuefire is able to query and modify data just like the custom CRUD methods we wrote in the previous section. Install the Vuefire npm package within the crud-app directory, like so:

npm install vuefire --save

To use the Firestore plugin provided by Vuefire, modify the src/main.js file and add the following, bolded lines of code to your file:

// src/main.js

import Vue from 'vue'
import App from './App.vue'
import './plugins/element.js'

import { firestorePlugin } from 'vuefire'
Vue.use(firestorePlugin);

Vue.config.productionTip = false
new Vue({
  render: h => h(App),
}).$mount('#app')

You also need to import the initialized Firebase app into src/App.vue:

import firebase from "./firebaseInit";
const db = firebase.firestore();

Vuefire CRUD operations

Let’s discuss the way Vuefire performs CRUD operations. To query data, we can use the firestore property to map our Firestore database so it can be accessed. We can use the following snippet to perform reads from the remote database:

// src/App.vue
// ...

<script>
import firebase from "./firebaseInit";
const db = firebase.firestore();
export default {
  name: 'app',
  data(){
    return {
      name: '',
      employeesData: []
    }
  },
  firestore: {
    employeesData: db.collection('employees')
  }
}
</script>

Vuefire also provides options to sort and filter data while reading from the remote database.

For modifying data, actions such as writing, updating, and deleting data from the database can be wrapped into methods that we can call using references. The following snippet performs data modification; the methods are formatted in bold characters:

// src/App.vue
// ...

<script>
import firebase from "./firebaseInit";
const db = firebase.firestore();
export default {
  name: "app",
  data() {
    return {
      name: "",
      employeesData: [],
    };
  },
  firestore: {
    employeesData: db.collection("employees"),
  },
  methods: {
    createEmployee(name) {
      this.$firestoreRefs.cities.add({
        name: name,
        date: new Date().toISOString().slice(0, 10),
      });
    },
    updateEmployee(employee) {
      const employee = { id: id, name: name, date: date };
      this.$firestoreRefs.employee.update({ name: employee.name }).then(() => {
        console.log("Employee updated!");
      });
    },
    deleteEmployee(id) {
      const employee = { id: id, name: name, date: date };
      this.$firestoreRefs.employee.doc(employee.id).delete();
    },
  },
};
</script>

To learn more about data modification with Vuefire, check out the official documentation here.

Deploying our Vue.js application

Firebase allows you to deploy static files — but first, you must build your assets. Within the crud-app directory, run the following command.

npm run build && cd dist

Next, initialize Firebase and complete the following steps.

firebase init

1. Define “hosting” as the Firebase CLI feature you want to set up for the folder
2. For the project setup, select Use an existing project
3. Navigate to and select the project we created earlier
4. Set the public directory as: .
5. For Configure as a single-page app (rewrite all urls to /index.html), choose Yes
6. For File ./index.html already exists. Overwrite? select No

To deploy, execute the following command.

firebase deploy

You can access the deployed app here.

Conclusion

You should now have the basic tools you need to build a simple application using Vue.js for the client side and Firebase for data storage and hosting. You can find the full source code on GitHub and also access a demo of the app.

To learn more, check out the following resources.

• Vue.js guide
• Element UI library
• Vuefire documentation
• Firebase documentation