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Francesco Di Donato
Francesco Di Donato

Posted on • Edited on

Applying slots in Vue for a Tabs component

I recently completed Udemy courses on Vue and Nuxt.js.
I decided to test this framework to build a Vaccine Tracker. Having a background in React, learning was smooth and natural.

An incredibly versatile element is the slot. From the first moment I wondered how they could be used for the construction of complex and at the same time versatile layouts. For example a Tabs component.


Tabs component implementation

As props it is sufficient that it receives a list of all the tabs to display.
In the state it is sufficient to keep track of the activated tab.
Finally, we need a method that is triggered when clicked on a different tab.

<script>
import Vue from 'vue'

export default Vue.extend({
  props: {
    labels: {
      type: Array,
      require: true,
    },
  },
  data() {
    return {
      activeLabel: this.$props.labels[0],
    }
  },
  methods: {
    onLabelClick(label) {
      this.activeLabel = label
    },
  },
})
</script>
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So far (syntax aside) nothing different from any other framework. However, the magic happens in the template:

<template>
  <div>
    <div v-for="label in labels" :key="label" @click="onLabelClick(label)">
      {{ label }}
    </div>
    <slot :name="activeLabel">Default {{ activeLabel }}</slot>
  </div>
</template>
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That's all. One iteration to show each tab. Below is a slot whose name is updating when one of the tabs is clicked.

For the purposes of this post I ignore the style. You can get fancy!


Tabs component usage

Wherever you want to use this component just do as follows:

<Tabs :labels="['one', 'two', 'three']">
          test
          <template #one>
            <div>Uno</div>
          </template>
          <template #two>
            <div>Due</div>
          </template>
          <template #three>
            <div>Tre</div>
          </template>
        </Tabs>
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Of the different templates, only the one relating to the active tab will be shown.
It's amazing how so few lines can lead to such versatile behavior.


Thanks for reading,
Repo 📑

If you like it, let's get in touch
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