When trying to master a new subject, a good way to learn is by grabbing a book written by a professional. There is nothing better than a well-written book written by a person who haves years of experience and can guide you. Of course, there are many technical books that are not only for newbies, books talking about algorithms or various advanced topics, are under the radar of many developers. Straight to the business – welcome to the books review, today we are gonna check the best Vue.js books.
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Are books a good way to learn Vue?
You might be wondering if it is even a good idea to learn Vue from books. That’s completely up to you. Everyone learns differently when someone likes reading a book, others prefer watching video courses. You might learn better when you have time to think, experiment. In my opinion, it is way better to read a good book that covers Vue topics than watch a tutorial that shows things only from one side. Also, the best books usually are written by experts. And they know what’s the most important for a newbie.
Top Vue.js books
Here are the most popular Vue.js books in 2021.
Vue.js: up and Running
A book that is released by O’Reilly and is written by Callum Macrae, is a great way to start. It teaches you different things, from basics that will let you build a small app, to more serious concepts that will let you build an advanced function, by using various methods.
The reading helps you to build a good foundation of Vue.js, and it bumps you to keep learning the path. Reading this will help you to understand more advanced concepts of the Vue, so it is a great book for beginners. However, if you are not a beginner and you are trying to find a book that will help you level up your knowledge, this might not be the book you were searching for.
What you will learn in this book? Some of the things you will be able to learn are basics of the Vue.js framework, usage of the templates, vue-cli (a handy command-line tool that will make your development easier). Of course, you will learn a very important thing – how you should structure your project. Some of the aspects you will learn in the Vue.js Up & Running book, are writing of unit tests, state management with a popular Vuex library, route creation with a vue-router, rendering of JSX. And of course, how without a styling – you will learn how you can make your app look fancy yet simple at the same time.
Here are the main advantages of the book:
- The book is pretty short, only 174 pages, so it won’t take you too long. And after you will finish it, you will be able to build a simple app. Also, as the book is short, it will not be that boring to finish it.
- If you know what are the HTML and JavaScript and how do they work, you won’t be spinning your head while reading, as this book is understandable for newbies with basic web development skills.
And some of the disadvantages:
- The shortness of the book might be an advantage and disadvantage at the same time. As it is short, there are plenty of things that weren’t mentioned. If you are looking for a Vue.js bible, this is not the book.
- It’s already 2 years old. It is not outdated, however, some of the things had changed. Anyway, the main concepts in the book are covered pretty well.
Building Applications with Spring 5 and Vue.js 2
A book, written by the James J. Ye and published by Packt, a name that is famous in the technical books area, is a great starter kit to learn how Vue.js can be used with Spring. The book will show you the ways of how you can incorporate both technologies and go full-stack with Java and Vue.js. Book will let you understand how you could connect the functionality from both, back end and front end side and the best ways how the code could be tested, developed. If you are either a Java developer or a Vue developer that wants to learn Spring, this is the perfect book as it is focused around the combination of the mentioned technologies.
This will benefit you in the way that you will be able to make a well structured (that’s an important factor), secure and scalable app.
Let’s talk about the advantages of the book:
- A pretty comprehensive (592 pages) book that shows you the main concepts of how can Spring and Vue be used together.
- Written by a known developer with plenty of experience.
And as with everything, it has some flaws:
- If you’ve read a similar book that covers Vue and any other back end language, some things might sound redundant to you. Anyway, you can always skim the book.
- A niche book that writes about a specific technology – Spring. If you are searching for something more generic and Vue-centric, this is not the best choice.
Vue.js in Action
What is this book about? As you might see, it’s purely about Vue.js. But more specifically, it covers such topics as Vue reactiveness, various features of the framework. Everything is incorporated into practical tasks. If you will be moving along the book, you will be building a shopping cart with admin UI and other needed functionality.
However, that’s not everything you will learn. Topics such as animations and transitions, interactivity, forms (and inputs), and other view model related things will be talked about. Moreover, you will learn about testing and how you can build an app that communicates with the back end. The Vue.js in action covers pretty much everything you need to head start your learning. After finishing this, you will have more than enough knowledge to go and build something great.
Book has 375 pages and is written in 2018.
Advantages of the book:
- Explains the topic pretty well. It has many good reviews stating that this book is superior in terms of the explanation. It is written so that it could be understood even by a newbie.
- Every chapter has small exercises that lets you gain practical skills. It also allows you to experiment.
- If you have experience with Vue, you will still have what to learn from the book. It covers a variety of things that are not always an introductory level.
Are there any disadvantages? At least from our point of view, we can’t see any. It is one of the best Vue.js books.
Getting to Know Vue.js: Learn to Build Single Page Applications in Vue from Scratch
The book is written by Brett Nelson and published by Apress. It covers the basics of the Vue framework and shows you how to use various tools (for building and other tasks). The book is focused on a person who has some experience with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, knows what are the SPAs, but is not an expert (yet). As we can see from the contents, it covers such basics as conditional rendering, events, state management (Vuex), routing, components, and so on.
The book was written in 2018 and has 278 pages.
What are the advantages of the book:
- Has some great examples that are easily understandable.
- Written having a beginner in mind. Every topic is explained as anyone who has not that much experience could understand.
Disadvantages of Getting to know Vue.js:
- For someone, who wants to get straight into serious things, the book might be too slow and too easy. However, this book is for beginners, and for the people that are advanced Vue users, this is not a fit.
Fullstack Vue: The Complete Guide to Vue.js
Fullstack Vue is a book written by the Hassan Djirdeh. It is a great reading to master the Vue. It has many examples combined with technical explanations. If something was covered in the book, an example illustrating it will be shown. Instead of giving only dull documentation, the book tries to explain how the concepts that were talked about could be used. According to the author, every one of the 8 chapters focuses on different parts of the Vue ecosystem. Some of the things that will be shown how it can be built: shopping cart, calendar event app, voting app, forms and validations, routes and authentication with Vuex, and of course, testing concepts.
The book is newest from the list – it was written in 2019. The book has 551 pages.
Here are the advantages that Fullstack Vue book has:
- It provides a practical view. Instead of the things that can be read from the documentation, the book gives the information in a simple understandable manner. In addition to the technical explanation of the Vue ecosystem, there are plenty of examples that will show you how Vue can be used to build things. There are additional files that can be downloaded to try everything by yourself.
- The author provides different packages of the book. With the base package, you get only a book, but with other packages, you get a video course or a book for the whole team, up to 10 persons.
- The author tries to keep the book relevant. Also, promised to update the materials if something new will be announced in the Vue ecosystem.
There isn’t anything bad to say about it. This is another piece that can be considered as one of the best Vue.js books.
Vue.js 2 design patterns and best practices
Another book, that is worth talking about, is the Vue.js 2 Design Patterns and Best Practices. As the book is released under the Packtr, it’s under the radar of different Vue developers. Anyway, this book, as the name of it states, is purely about design patterns and best practices
What this 344 pages book states, is that it shows how you can use design patterns for the Vue app architecture. Following the book examples, you will learn how to create a Flux-like architecture with Vuex.
Unfortunately, according to different reviews, there isn’t much useful information. There is nothing you could find in the documentation. However, if you are a beginner, it will be a great book to deepen your knowledge. But this book is not for advanced developers, as it could look from the first glance.
Anyway, here are the advantages summarized:
- If you are just starting to build the skills with Vue, this will be a good book for you.
And here are the disadvantages of the Vue.js 2 Design Patterns and best practices:
- For someone who is already experienced but searches for a serious book that will help to improve, this might not be the best choice. This book doesn’t go into something deeper than it wasn’t stated in the official Vue documentation.
Testing Vue.js Applications
Testing is definitely one of the things every developer is dealing with. Everyone makes mistakes, development never goes fluently, everyone faces some problems that they have to solve. During the process, you will spend a significant amount of time trying to test your app. Especially if you are a beginner.
Talking about the books, Testing Vue.js applications is a specialized book about testing Vue apps. This book is probably the only book in the Vue world that talks about testing. What does the book cover? It shows the reader different testing methods for components and the application. Unit tests, end-to-end tests, snapshot tests, component tests, mocking. All the main concepts of testing Vue.js application will be covered
Advantages of the book:
- A specialized Vue book that talks about testing and best practices of testing.
- Writing that way that any developer could understand the concepts covered in the book.
One of the best Vue.js books is … the documentation
That’s right, documentation is a great source to learn Vue from. Well, but this shouldn’t be a surprise.
Vue.js has wonderful documentation where you can find everything you need to build an app. Guide, that you can find there is pretty comprehensive, so if you are a complete newbie, some of the details might be hard to understand. So, starting with a good book that was focused on teaching anyone regards technical background, might be a better option. But still, investigate what you can find in the documentation and consider if it makes sense to you.
Also, I’ve made this article that explains key things and that will help you with the technical details of spinning a Vue project. In the end, it doesn’t matter what learning method you will choose. If you will be persistent enough, it is just a matter of time when you will master the framework.
If you are ready, grab one of the mentioned the most popular Vue.js books in 2021, and get ready to increase your skills!