vue2/changes.md

If you happen to see this - note that most of these are just planned but subject to change at any moment. Feedback is welcome though.

Instantiation

If no el option is provided at instantiation, Vue will no longer auto-create an empty div for you. In this case, the instance is considered to be in "unmounted" state. Data will be observed, but no DOM compilation will happen until the new instance method $mount has been explicitly called.

var vm = new Vue({ data: {a:1} }) // only observes the data
vm.$mount('#app') // actually compile the DOM

// in comparison, this will compile instantly just like before.
var vm = new Vue({ el: '#app', data: {a: 1} })

New Scope Inheritance Model

In the previous version, nested Vue instances do not have prototypal inheritance of their data scope. Although you can access parent data properties in templates, you need to explicitly travel up the scope chain with this.$parent in JavaScript code or use this.$get() to get a property on the scope chain. The expression parser also needs to do a lot of dirty work to determine the correct scope the variables belong to.

In the new model, we provide a scope inehritance system similar to Angular, in which you can directly access properties that exist on parent scopes. The major difference is that setting a primitive value property on a child scope WILL affect that on the parent scope! This is one of the major gotchas in Angular. If you are somewhat familiar with how prototype inehritance works, you might be surprised how this is possible. Well, the reason is that all data properties in Vue are getter/setters, and invoking a setter will not cause the child scope shadowing parent scopes. See the example here.

The result of this model is a much cleaner expression evaluation implementation. All expressions can simply be evaluated with the vm's $scope as the this context.

This is very useful, but it probably should only be available in implicit child instances created by flow-control directives like v-repeat, v-if, etc. Explicit components should retain its own root scope and use some sort of two way binding like v-with to bind to data from outer scope.

Option changes

instance-only options

el, parent and data are now instance-only options - that means they should not be used and will be ignored in Vue.extend().

It's probably easy to understand why el and parent are instance only. But why data? Because it's really easy to shoot yourself in the foot when you use data in Vue.extend(). Non-primitive values will be shared by reference across all instances created from that constructor, and changing it from one instance will affect the state of all the others! It's a bit like shared properties on the prototype. In vanilla javascript, the proper way to initialize instance data is to do so in the constructor: this.someData = {}. Similarly in Vue, you can do so in the created hook by setting this.$data.someData = {}.

new option: events.

When events are used extensively for cross-vm communication, the ready hook can get kinda messy. The new events option is similar to its Backbone equivalent, where you can declaratiely register a bunch of event listeners.

removed options: id, tagName, className, attributes, lazy.

Since now a vm must always be provided the el option or explicitly mounted to an existing element, the element creation releated options have been removed for simplicity. If you need to modify your element's attributes, simply do so in the new beforeMount hook.

The lazy option is removed because this does not belong at the vm level. Users should be able to configure individual v-model instances to be lazy or not.

Hook changes

new hook: beforeMount

This new hook is introduced to accompany the separation of instantiation and DOM mounting. It is called right before the DOM compilation starts and this.$el is available, so you can do some pre-processing on the element here.

Computed Properties

$get and $set is now simply get and set:

computed: {
  fullName: {
    get: function () {},
    set: function () {}
  }
}

Directive changes

New options

• literal: replaces old options isLiteral and isEmpty.
• twoway: indicates the directive is two-way and may write back to the model. Allows the use of this.set(value) inside directive functions.
• paramAttributes: an Array of attribute names to extract as parameters for the directive. For example, given the option value ['my-param'] and markup <input v-my-dir="msg" my-param="123">, you can access this.params['my-param'] with value '123' inside directive functions.

Removed options: isLiteral, isEmpty, isFn

• isFn is no longer necessary for directives expecting function values.

Two Way filters

If a filter is defined as a function, it is treated as a read filter by default - i.e. it is applied when data is read from the model and applied to the DOM. You can now specify write filters as well, which are applied when writing to the model, triggered by user input. Write filters are only triggered on two-way bindings like v-model.

Vue.filter('format', {
  read: function (val) {
    return val + '!'
  },
  write: function (val, oldVal) {
    return val.match(/ok/) ? val : oldVal
  }
})

Block logic control

<!-- v-repeat="list" -->
  <h2>{{title}}</h2>
  <p>{{content}}</p>
<!-- v-repeat-end -->

<!-- v-if="showProfile" -->
  <my-avatar></my-avatar>
  <my-bio></my-bio>
<!-- v-if-end -->

<!-- v-partial="hello" -->

Note The old inline partial syntax {{> partial}} has been removed. This is to keep the semantics of interpolation tags purely for interpolation purposes; flow control and partials are now either used in the form of attribute directives or comment directives.

Config API change

Instead of the old Vue.config() with a heavily overloaded API, the config object is now available globally as Vue.config, and you can simply change its properties:

// old
// Vue.config('debug', true)

// new
Vue.config.debug = true

Prefix

Config prefix now should include the hyphen: so the default is now v- and if you want to change it make sure to include the hyphen as well. e.g. Vue.config.prefix = "data-".

Interpolation Delimiters

In the old version the interpolation delimiters are limited to the same base character (i.e. ['{','}'] translates into {{}} for text and {{{}}} for HTML). Now you can set them to whatever you like (*almost), and to indicate HTML interpolation, simply wrap the tag with one extra outer most character on each end. Example:

Vue.config.delimiters = ['(%', '%)']
// tags now are (% %) for text
// and ((% %)) for HTML

• Note you still cannot use < or > in delimiters because Vue uses DOM-based templating.

(Experimental) Validators

This is largely write filters that accept a Boolean return value. Probably should live as a plugin.

  <input v-model="abc @ email">

  Vue.validator('email', function (val) {
    return val.match(...)
  })
  // this.$validation.abc // false
  // this.$valid // false

(Experimental) One time interpolations

<span>{{* hello }}</span>