Using Storybook for More Robust Vue Components

Why Storybook is an Essential Tool for Building UI Components

As software development continues to evolve, there is a growing demand for reusable UI components. UI components are crucial in building applications, especially as the scale of projects grows. One tool that has become increasingly popular in recent years is Storybook. In this article, we'll explore why Storybook is an essential tool for building UI components.

Test Components in Isolation

One of the primary benefits of Storybook is the ability to build and test components in isolation. This allows developers to identify and fix issues with missing data and props. Additionally, developers can test components in all possible states, ensuring that component styles are not dependent on containers. For reusability, components should keep their styles regardless of the parent container. For example, a media component should not break if used outside of the .media-list container. Instead, it should retain its basic layout and internal styles. If it breaks, then it's not reusable. Storybook helps bring these issues to the forefront and enables developers to build more reusable components.

Living Style Guide

Initially, some developers may resist using Storybook for their applications because they don't want to maintain duplicate components. However, Storybook lives within your app, so little duplication of code is needed. You do have to add components to stories, but you never have to rebuild them from scratch. When components are updated, your style guide updates automatically. This feature allows developers to maintain a living style guide that keeps pace with any changes to their application.

Allows Components to be Built Efficiently

Storybook allows developers to see at a glance what components are available and where components can be broken into smaller pieces. It also keeps a mindset of presentational vs. semantic components. Presentational components are purely about design, not functionality, while semantic components have a distinct goal. It's essential to think about how components will work and what purpose they serve, but this can limit reuse. Focusing on what a component does versus how it looks can make it difficult to imagine reusing it. Storybook helps developers spot opportunities to reuse atomic components. Presentational components can also be used as wrappers for semantic components.

Tons of Addons

Storybook offers tons of addons, such as markdown documentation, actions for testing emitted events and links, and spotting accessibility issues. These addons make it easier for developers to test and maintain their components.

As a Vue developer, you know that building and testing components is a fundamental part of your workflow. However, relying solely on manual testing can be time-consuming and error-prone, especially when working with complex components. That's where Storybook comes in handy. Storybook is an open-source tool for building and testing UI components in isolation. It enables you to develop and document components in a systematic and efficient way.

In this article, we'll walk you through how to set up Storybook in a Vue 3 project with Vite.

Getting Started with Storybook in Vue 3

To start using Storybook, you'll need to install it as a development dependency in your Vue 3 project.

npm install --save-dev @storybook/vue@^6.4.0

Once the installation is complete, create a .storybook folder at the root of your project. Within this folder, create a main.js file that will be used to configure Storybook.

// .storybook/main.js
module.exports = {
  stories: ["../src/**/*.stories.@(js|mdx)"],
  addons: [
    "@storybook/addon-links",
    "@storybook/addon-essentials",
    "@storybook/addon-a11y",
  ],
};

In this configuration file, we specify where our stories will be located and which addons we want to include. Here, we've included the essential addons for building and testing components.

Next, create a preview.js file in the same .storybook folder. This file will be used to add global styles and decorators to our Storybook stories.

// .storybook/preview.js
import "../src/assets/main.css";

export const parameters = {
  actions: { argTypesRegex: "^on[A-Z].*" },
};

In this file, we import our global styles, and we set up the actions addon to handle events emitted by our components.

Now we can create our first story in the src directory. A story is a functional component that represents a state of a component. We create stories by writing functions that return a component with different props and states.

Here's an example of a simple story for a button component:

// src/components/Button/Button.stories.js
import Button from "./Button.vue";

export default {
  title: "Components/Button",
  component: Button,
  argTypes: {
    label: { control: "text" },
  },
};

const Template = (args, { argTypes }) => ({
  props: Object.keys(argTypes),
  components: { Button },
  template: '<Button v-bind="$props" />',
});

export const Primary = Template.bind({});
Primary.args = {
  label: "Click me!",
  variant: "primary",
};

export const Secondary = Template.bind({});
Secondary.args = {
  label: "Click me!",
  variant: "secondary",
};

In this example, we've created two stories for a Button component: Primary and Secondary. Each story has its own set of props that define the state of the component. We use the Template function to create a new instance of the component for each story.

Finally, start Storybook by running the following command:

npm run storybook

This will start a local server where you can preview your components and interact with them.

In conclusion, Storybook is an essential tool for building UI components. Its ability to test components in isolation, maintain a living style guide, and build components efficiently makes it a valuable asset for any development team. By using Storybook, developers can create reusable, scalable UI components that can improve the speed and efficiency of their software development process.