npm package: @sparkz-community/form-gen-client-lib
Description: Sparkz Community Form Generator Client Library
Author: Sparkz Community Development
Latest version: 1.1.5

# IY Component Library Starter

> Create your own component library with [Vue CLI 3](https://cli.vuejs.org/) and [VuePress](https://vuepress.vuejs.org/).

This starter project includes a documentation app powered by VuePress. It not only documents the usage of the component, but also provides a testing bed during the development of components.

> Dev dependency "@vue/babel-preset-app": "^4.1.1" is introduced as Vue CLI v4 is using core-js v3.x while vuepress 1.2.0 is still using core-js v2.x.

## Setup

``` bash
# install dependencies
npm install

# start the doc app with hot reload, great for testing components
npm run docs:dev

# build the library, available under dist
npm run build

# build the doc app, available under docs/.vuepress/dist
npm run docs:build
```

## npm Setup
create [npm account](https://www.npmjs.com/signup).

### Set up iy4u profile:
```bash
npmrc -c sparkz-community
npm login --scope=@sparkz-community --registry=https://registry.npmjs.org/
```

### Set up ionrev profile:
```bash
npmrc -c ionrev
npm login --scope=@ionrev --registry=https://registry.npmjs.org/
```

### switch profiles:
```bash
npmrc ionrev
npmrc iy4u
```

## How it works

### Components

The library is a [Vue plugin](https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/plugins.html). Its `install` function in [install.js](src/install.js) imports all components from `components` folder, registers them to Vue and automatically call itself.

### Mixins, Utils and Constants

Besides the `install` function, [index.js](src/index.js) may also exports mixins, utils and constants. The client may use them as below:

```js
<script>
import { MyMixin, MyConstants, MyUtil } from '@sparkz-community/form-gen-client-lib'

export default {
  mixins: [MyMixin],
  data () {
    return {
      magicNum: MyConstants.MAGIC_NUM
    }
  },
  methods: {
    add (a, b) {
      return MyUtil.add(a, b)
    }
  }
}
</script>
```

### Global styles

If your component library contains a set of styles used by all components, you may refer to `asserts/main.css` as an example. It defines a simple style (green color border) used by the two example components in the library.

To use the global style in client app, including the components defined by the client app, import it in your `main.js`:

```js
import '@sparkz-community/form-gen-client-lib/assets/main.css'
```

If you want to avoid conflicting with other global styles, consider pre-fix your classes in your style, or wrap them into a namespace class.

### Third-party libraries

Third-party libraries you library depends on bloats the size of your library, if not handled well.

#### Externalize

One strategy is to make it external. As an example, the popular library [moment](https://momentjs.com/) is used by ComponentA. Since it is very likely the client of your library may also use this library, we configure CLI not to include it to the bundle by adding the following in `vue.config.js`.

```js
module.exports = {
  //...
  chainWebpack: config => {
    config.externals({
      moment: 'moment'
    })
  }
}
```

In your client app, you don't need to explicitly add dependency to `moment` in `package.json` as it is a dependency of `@sparkz-community/form-gen-client-lib`. However, if you want to reduce the size of the bundle size of client app, add the following in the `vue.config.js` of client app ([details](https://github.com/jmblog/how-to-optimize-momentjs-with-webpack)), assuming it is also built with Vue CLI .

```js
const webpack = require('webpack')
module.exports = {
  //...
  plugins: [
    // Ignore all locale files of moment.js
    new webpack.IgnorePlugin(/^\.\/locale$/, /moment$/),
  ],
}
```

#### Cherry picking

Another strategy is to embed cherry-picked functions with tree shaking. As an example, the `fill` function of popular library [lodash](https://lodash.com) is used by ComponentA.

To get the tree shaking working, import the `fill` function like the following. Note that `import { fill } from 'lodash'` or `import _ from 'lodash'` will not work and will embed the whole `lodash` library.

```js
import fill from 'lodash/fill'
```

If your client app also use `lodash` and you don't want `lodash` to be in both the client app and the component libraries, even after cherry-picking, you may consider cherry picking in component library and re-export them as utils for client to consume, so that the client does not need to depend on `lodash`, therefore avoiding duplication.

## Use your component library

You may publish your component library to NPM repository. If you prefer to use/test your component library locally in a client app, you may use `npm link` or [install-local](https://github.com/nicojs/node-install-local).

If your app is not using a bundler, the following is the example of how to use the library in vanilla HTML page. Note that it loads the global and component level CSS, as well as externalized third-party library Moment.

```html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Demo app</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="assets/main.css">
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="dist/form-gen-client-lib.css">
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="app">
      <p>Component A: <component-a/></p>
      <p>Component B: <component-b @click="onClick"/></p>
    </div>
  </body>

  <script src="https://unpkg.com/vue"></script>
  <script src="https://unpkg.com/moment"></script>
  <script src="dist/form-gen-client-lib.umd.js"></script>
  <script>
      console.log(window['form-gen-client-lib'])
      var app = new Vue({
        el: '#app',
        methods: {
          onClick (message) {
            alert(message)
          }
        }
      })
    </script>
</html>
```