How to Use Vue.js Mixins In A Better Way

Mixins are often used in projects to reuse some piece of business logic, but they have uncertainties and some nuances, which are more and more noticeable during project development. I faced them occasionally, and they caused difficulties in refactoring a codebase or developing new features.

Before describing my approach, I’d like to go through the advantages and disadvantages of using mixins.

Advantages:

• Extends DRY principles of code reusing. We can reuse the same business logic in a different component;
• We can use mixin as a global mixin and share context with all components;
• Mixin is a great tool to build a modular project structure.

Disadvantages:

• Non-transparent logic of components that use mixins. I mean it’s hard to see the whole picture of a component consisting of lots of rows of code and a few connected mixins. Especially, it feels when you are a new developer on a project and onboarding takes more time;
• Overwritable context. You have to pay attention not to overwrite methods, getters, or data by some mixin because of the same name;

Disadvantages are not critical to avoid using mixins, but we should know them. I propose using the way based on these tricks to minimize them:

• Use prefixes at the start of a method, getter, value, and props names. It shows what functionality a mixin relates to. Using this tip gives you the ability to separate easily component props and mixin ones.
  For example: $<mixinName>_<(prop|method|value)>

How using props looks in a parent component:

• I prefer not to use a prefix for a global mixin. Usually, the name of the methods and values are clear, and their functionality isn’t duplicated in other project parts, so you don’t need a prefix for them.

Advantages of the approach:

• Mixins methods or properties are conveniently used by IDE autocomplete.
• Using a prefix avoids accidentally overwriting mixin methods and properties by component methods.
• Transparency and convenient reading of component code by developers on big projects.

Conclusion

Mixin is a helpful tool but can make your project more complex, inflexible, and non-transparent on big projects. Using this approach is a good practice to keep a good developer experience and avoid disadvantages.

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