2021-09-30
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#vue
Michael Gallagher
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Sep 30, 2021 ⋅ 8 min read

Vuex showdown: Mutations vs. actions

Michael Gallagher Living in the vibrant city of Buenos Aires, developing project management software with Teamwork. Modern JS is my passion; Vue, my tool of choice.

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2 Replies to "Vuex showdown: Mutations vs. actions"

  1. Hi Michael, thanks for this nice article! Vuex is a great tool but I think we are lacking some guidelines to follow to get it right.

    I often read that mutations should be one-liners , or at least remain really simple… Why? The doc describes a mutation as a transaction, this term makes me think that we could write as much code as needed in a single mutation to enforce state coherency.

    Let’s take a simple example: an image with its width and height stored in the state, and a boolean to keep aspect ratio when changing the width or height. Would you advise to write the keep aspect ratio logic in the ´setWidth’ and ´setHeight’ mutations, or move it into the actions?

    Thanks!

  2. Hey Jonathan,

    Glad you like the article, I’ve tried my best not to be overly opinionated about it. I normally use actions, even if it is just wrapping a mutation. The question for me in your example is whether there are 1 or 2 actions/mutations. You could have the 2 you mention, or maybe `setDimensions` which would set both? The reason I say it is that, to me, the width and height will probably always be set together, considering them as separate transactions for either mutations or actions, doesn’t give any additional benefit to traceability, readability or reusability. And this would cover your aspect ratio point also.

    Cheers
    Mike

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