vue-dd — object viewer    

vue-dd — pronounced vúed or vue dd — is a Vue 3 object viewer for displaying complex JavaScript objects, Vue Reactive and Ref objects, Functions, Maps, Sets, Symbols and all JavaScript Primitives in order to monitor their changes live with full reactivity. Inspired by the Laravels dd() debugging function.

vue-dd-example-1.mov

vue-dd-example-2.mov

Video example code in Vue 3 <script setup> style:

import { VueDd } from 'vue-dd'
import { getCurrentInstance } from 'vue'

// get Vue instance
const instance = getCurrentInstance()

In <template> add:

<vue-dd name="setupState" v-model="instance.setupState" />

In the example above we are watching the whole Vue instance, it can be taxing and create Vue warnings, you can set :deep="false" to disable deep watching. Deep watching is true by default, but watching Vue instance or instance.setupState deeply can create a flood of Vue.js warnings because we start watching Vue itself. To prevent flooding, set :deep="false", but note some live reactivity tracking will be lost. In this example it is used to show advanced capability of vue-dd to watch even Vue instance itself.

About

The component renders object as a tree that can be expanded to display nested values, very similar to inspecting JavaScript objects using the Developer Tools, but with full reactivity & advanced UI and UX designed specifically for ease of use and joy for the developer.

Install

# npm
npm install vue-dd
# yarn
yarn add vue-dd

Add globally in main.js:

import { VueDd } from 'vue-dd'
// create app
const app = createApp(App)
// register component
app.component('VueDd', VueDd)

or add locally in component:

import { VueDd } from 'vue-dd'

Usage

Use it just like any other Vue.js component. The value to display is passed as v-model or :model-value:

<vue-dd v-model="object" />

Features

• deep live reactive watching of objects like in developer console but fully reactive
• even VueJS internal refs deps can be watched
• pre-open multiple levels of an object with open-level
• pre-open multiple specific parts of an object with open-specific
• focus window on certain parts of an object
• save and save-focus modes to remember the focused item and also everything that was previously opened
• performance optimized, even large objects like window can be vue-dd
• expessive short syntax
• modern reactive Maps, Sets, Symbols are supported

Beautiful & Pixel Perfect

• dark and light modes are built in
• fully configurable & fully themeable via CSS
• functions code is highlighted with highlight.js
• highlight.js is built in to retain 0 dependecy architecture

Zero dependencies

This component does not depend on any other package, except Vue 3

Props

Property	Default	Type	Details
model-value	none	undefined	JS or VueJS object or primitive
id	empty	String, Number	If empty, id will be auto-generated, id is used in save and saveFocus modes, to store opened & focused elements
name	empty	String	The name of the object
get-all-properties	false	Boolean	Gets all objects' properties including the prototype properties, useful to get all properties of classes.
open-level	0	Number, String, Array	Default is 0 or folded. Number or String like (1 or '2' or 3) will open all levels up to that level. Array of levels like [2,3,5] will pre-open specifically those levels only, if 0 is not specified, it will still be folded initially.
open-specific	[]	Array	Array of elements to pre-open. For ex. window object, has window.navigator and window.history, history has window.history.state objects. To pre-open them specify ['window','window.history','window.history.state'] or just ['window.history.state'] as it requires all of the above objects to be open already. If objects are not descendants then specify separately like this ['window.history.state', 'window.navigator']
focus	null	String, Number	Focus element to open, similar to òpen-specific`, but just 1 item. The browser will open and scroll to that element if it is specified.
focus-sticky	false	Boolean	Focus sticky, will keep 'sticking' to the focused element, even when object undergoes changes or you open and close levels, false by default.
focus-offset-x	-35	Number	X plane offset when scrolling to focused element
focus-offset-y	-15	Number	Y plane offset when scrolling to focused element
focus-delay	300	Number	Delay in milliseconds, before focusing
preview	5	Number, Boolean false	Number of elements to preview when viewing an object or an array. This can be made less or more depending on performance needs. Less is faster, because there is less rendering. It can also be fully turned off by setting 0 or false
preview-initial	true	Boolean	Initial object's preview can be turned off, to make the item take less space on the screen. Instead of obj {1, 2, 3, 4, 5}, it will just be obj {...} on the first level, when you open it, it will use preview value for the rest of the items.
escape-quotes	false	Boolean	Strings will have escaped double quotes, " will be converted to \"
long-text	50	Number	Determines if the string is too long, and will concatenate it to the specified number of characters, you can open full text like a function or an object
delimiter	.	String	Delimiter to determine the open-specific element, you can modify this to allow for dots in the object attributes
more	...	String	Text for the expand button
arrow	▼	String	Text for the arrow button
inline	true	Boolean	Inline mode makes the object, when folded to be a simple display:inline-block, but when expanded it becomes display:block
dark	true	Boolean	Dark / light modes
font-family	"JetBrains Mono", "Courier", serif	Boolean	Font family
font-size	0.7rem	String	Font size
line-height	1rem	String	Line height
padding-left	0.7rem	String	Padding left for sub-elements
max-height	500px	String	Max height
max-width	100%	String	Max width
save	false	Boolean	Save mode, will save all opened elements, to remember closed elements, all sub-elements must be closed in this mode
save-focus	true	Boolean	Save-focus mode, will save save an element to open if you select an eye icon on it, very useful to quickly open and scroll to the needed sub-object / value. Requires id or name prop to be set, anonymous save-focus is deprecated.
storage	session	Boolean	Storage 'local' or 'session' can be used, to store data for save and save-focus modes. 'local' storage will save data for the whole browser, 'session' will save elements for specific tab only.
watch	true	Boolean	Should objects be watched? Watching can be disabled for big data sets. Reactive objects will still be watched by VueJS, but refs will lose their reactivity in displayed object.
deep	true	Boolean	Should objects be watched deeply? Watching deeply can be disabled for big data sets. Reactive objects will still be watched by VueJS, refs will still be reactive, but regular objects will lose their reactivity when they contain reactive objects within themselves (this is a useful side-effect that was discovered)

Emits

Emit	Function	Args	Details
toggle	(setup) => {...}	{ event, open, pointer, level } = setup	Emit fired when a user clicks to open or close any element
open	(setup) => {...}	{ open, pointer, level } = setup	On open by vue-dd itself or by a user, this emit will be called
focus	(setup) => {...}	{ focus: <String>'window.navigator'``, focusElement: <HTMLElement> } = setup	When element is focused this emit is called

Develop Your Own Tools

• Vue-dd allows you to create advanced debugging tools on top of it as it is very customizable and feature rich
• There are many things that can be done with this package, for ex. here is what I am doing with it right now:
  • Create a VueJS based developer console, write a name of an object / primitive and it will output it
  • Create mobile debugging, by putting this output above all modals, tooltips in your app, track reactive changes, as you browse mobile or desktop versions of your app
  • All of these features area currently in development in XRay component, that will soon be part of vue-dd, but feel free to develop your own versions with this package

Modern JavaScript Support

This component supports modern javascript features such as Maps, Sets and Symbols. Reactive reactive(new Map()) and reactive(new Set()) can be watched and updated reactively.

Licence

The licence is MIT, so any extension, forking is welcome. Vue-dd is designed to create a low level, zero dependency tooling for VueJS, that has potential to become a standard for reactivity tracking.

All contributions are welcome to improve this package. It is pretty feature rich at this point, but things always can be improved and I am always looking for feedback.

Need More?

What other features, props, emits would be useful to create a world class debugging tool in Vue? Please, write to me in feature requests or submit a PR request with your code.

Vue 2 Support

Versions up to [email protected] supported Vue 2.7.5 and above, but import of the package is different from Vue 3. In Vue 2 vue-dd is imported as default and not as a destructured VueDd

// to install vue-dd with Vue 2 support
// yarn add [email protected]
// npm install [email protected]
// note: 'import VueDd...', and not 'import { VueDd }...'
import VueDd from 'vue-dd'

Also note in Vue 2, you have to use :model-value instead of v-model

<vue-dd :model-value="obj" />

Note that Vue 2 version cannot support large objects like window. For some reason, it reaches a stack size limit and breaks. It is a known issue in Vue 2, that's why migrate to Vue 3 ASAP in order to use the full power of vue-dd

Credits & Thanks

This was initially a fork of vue-object-view project by Emanuel Buzek.
Huge Thank You to Emanuel Buzek and his initial work back in 2017, as it was used as the base to create this hugely expanded version with advanced functionality.

Highlight.js is built into vue-dd to provide JavaScript function highlighting.

Kudos to VueJS & Evan You for creating a superb reactive framework that allows this to be built!

Vue-dd name is inspired by Laravel's dd() function, as it used to output objects in PHP Laravel framework, shout out to Taylor Otwell, as Laravel is also a truly inspiring work of art in PHP world that also enlivened VueJS Open Source Development to be what it is today!