Integrate Vue.js with CakePHP framework

CakePHP is a great framework to build traditional web applications rapidly. But every application needs interactivity and often that has to be done without loading or refreshing the full webpage. That's where JavaScript comes into the picture, and there are lots of JS libraries and frameworks like Vue, React and many more which make it easy to add interactivity to your application. Also over the past few years single page applications(commonly referred to as SPA) are gaining popularity.

That being said Vue or React can make building front-end easy, but it can not replace the back-end. So it is essential to integrate both front-end and back-end properly so that we can have the best of both worlds.

While integrating modern JS frameworks(Vue or React) with CakePHP is really easy, there's no guide or resource that tells exactly how it should be done. I often see people posting questions on how or what is the best practice to integrate Vue.js with CakePHP and saying that there's no resource that can help them.

So here I am trying to answer their question on how to integrate Vue.js with CakePHP. While I'm focusing on Vue.js on front-end the general concept/idea would be the same for React or Svelte or any other front-end frameworks.

Installation

1. First, let's create a fresh CakePHP project via composer:

    composer create-project --prefer-dist cakephp/app:~4.0 cakephp-vuejs-app
   

2. Now install AssetMix plugin:

    composer require ishanvyas22/asset-mix
   

Why this plugin? Well, this plugin helps us integrate Laravel Mix with the CakePHP framework with ease. This plugin will take all the hard work for us so that we can focus on building the application with Vue.js and CakePHP.

Configuration

1. Load the plugin using the below command:

    bin/cake plugin load AssetMix
   

2. Generate Vue.js scaffoldings:

    bin/cake asset_mix generate --dir=resources
   

   Read about generating commands for the AssetMix plugin at https://github.com/ishanvyas22/asset-mix#generate-command

3. Install front-end dependencies:

   Using npm:

    npm install
   

   or

   Using yarn:

    yarn install
   

4. Compile your assets:

   For development:

    npm run dev
   

5. Add the below line in src/View/AppView.php file's initialize() method:

    $this->loadHelper('AssetMix.AssetMix');
   

That's it! Now we are ready to use Vue.js with CakePHP.

Once you've loaded AssetMix helper, you now have access to script(), css(), etc. methods which you can use to call your compiled assets.

To include app.js file you've just compiled, add the below code into your layout templates/layout/default.php file:

<?= $this->AssetMix->script('app') ?>

Now create a view file templates/Pages/greet.php to call the Vue component to see it in action. Add the below code inside that file:

<div id="app">
    <h1>Greetings</h1>
    <!-- Load AppGreet component -->
    <app-greet></app-greet>
</div>

Now run bin/cake server command to quickly start the development server and go to http://localhost:8765/pages/greet URL to see the result. You will see "Hello world!" text printed on the page.

Now to change the text, edit resources/js/components/AppGreet.vue file:

<template>
  <div>
    Welcome to CakePHP + Vue.js world!
  </div>
</template>

Run npm run dev to compile the assets or you can also run npm run watch which will watch for the changes inside the resources directory and will compile the assets automatically. Now reload the http://localhost:8765/pages/greet page again to see the result.

That's it! You have successfully integrated Vue.js into the CakePHP application. You can file the full source code of this post at https://github.com/ishanvyas22/cakephp-vuejs-skeleton.

I hope this post helps you. In case you've any questions/suggestions feel free to add comments.

Resources

• CakePHP installation: https://book.cakephp.org/4/en/installation.html

• Laravel Mix: https://laravel-mix.com/docs/6.0/what-is-mix

• AssetMix plugin: https://github.com/ishanvyas22/asset-mix

• Article full source code: https://github.com/ishanvyas22/cakephp-vuejs-skeleton

• CakePHP Vue.js SPA: https://github.com/ishanvyas22/cakephpvue-spa

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