WordPress Starter-Plugin featuring VueJS and REST API

This starter plugin demonstrates the usage of VueJS apps in the frontend of a WordPress website and the communication with the WordPress backend via a customized WP REST API endpoint.

Features

This plugin is also meant as a starting point for the development of own WordPress+VueJS plugins. Therefore, it features:

• A basic WordPress plugin including:
  • A frontend class, which renders the VueJS app,
  • A backend class, which provides a simple settings page,
  • A REST class, which creates a single REST endpoint.
• A VueJS app:
  • Shows a message string, which can be defined on the plugin's settings page.
  • The message string is loaded via a request to a customized WP REST API endpoint.
• Webpack as a module bundler and task runner, including ready-to-use configurations for
  • Babel, BrowserSync, ESLint and code minimization.

Installation

Prerequisites: Node.js must be installed – visit the Node.js website for installation instructions or use NVM (recommended).

1. Clone this repo to your local WordPress plugin folder.
2. Run npm install inside the new folder to install all dependencies.
3. Run npm run dev to bundle the VueJS app to public/frontend.js
   or run npm run prod to bundle to public/frontend.min.js.
4. Active the plugin ("Plugin Vue Starter") in the adminstration area.
5. Create a new page. Add a shortcode [vue-app] anywhere in the page content.

Visit the page. The shortcode is now replaced by the VueJS app. The displayed message text can be set in the plugin's settings page in the admin area (Settings/Plugin-Vue Starter).

File structure

The folder includes contains three PHP classes: one for the frontend, one for the admin page and one for the REST endpoint. The classes are loaded by the main plugin file plugin-vue-starter.php.

The VueJS app files are located in src. The app is very simple. The only additional module is Axios, which is used for the API calls.

The final bundles are saved in the public/ folder.

Development

This starter plugin is ready for development:

1. Configure the browser synchronization in the Webpack configuration file webpack.config.js to use the URL of your frontend webpage (see option proxy in the call of the BrowserSyncPlugin).

2. Run npm run watch to start browser synchronization: Any change of the plugin files will trigger a) a new bundling of the app and b) the reload of the frontend page in the browser.

You can easily extend the plugin in various ways:

• Extend the basic VueJS app,
• Add additional VueJS apps (in src/) and connect them to new shortcodes (in includes/code-frontend.php).
• Extend the settings page and/or include VueJS apps also in the admin area.
• Extend the REST API.

Production

The plugin can easily deployed to your production server:

1. Make sure that the minimized bundle file (frontend.min.js) is loaded in function render_vue_app() in file class-frontend.php.
2. Copy only necessary files to the server:
   • folder includes/ with all files,
   • folder public/ with the file frontend.min.js,
   • and the file plugin-vue-starter.php in plugin main folder.