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Migrating from PortalVue 2

PortalVue 3 is a complete re-write in order to optimize the codebase with new things Vue 3 gives us, and in the process, work over the APIs and features a bit, cleaning up some cruft here and there.

From consumer's perspective, not too much has changed, so most use cases should just continue to work or need little adjusting to make them work again.

One notable exception is <MountingPortal>, which was dropped in this release and is replaced with a small utility function to mount a PortalTarget for a normal Portal (see Changes further down.)

Sidenotes: Vue 3 & Teleport

One question developers already accustomed with Vue 3 will will likely have is:

"Do we actually still need this library? Vue 3 has <Teleport> now!"

The honest answer is: You probably don't need this library anymore for the typical use cases like moving modals to <body> etc. But if you are moving content within your app, from one component to another, then <Teleport> on its own is not a good choice, and you will likely still profit from using this library.

One thing to note here is that PortalVue still does not use <Teleport>under the hood. The main reason for that decision is that there would be a lot more behavioral differences that might make migration harder if we re-built PortalVue 3 on top of Teleport.

So think of PortalVue 3 as a kind of Migration release that should give you more or less the same behavior you had with PortalVue 2 in you Vue 2 apps, but also comes with most of the caveats that the previous versions had.

We do plan to release another major version later (maybe even as a new, separate library), which will be built in top of Teleport, at which point you can migrate to the new version in your Vue 3 app at your own pace if you want to.

Migration Strategy

The bread-and-butter use case should be fairly easy to migrate, as the Portal and PortalTarget Components only lost a couple of props that are now no longer required in Vue 3, like slim (see below).

Notable breaking changes that do need some revamping affect two use cases:

  1. Transitions defined on the PortalTarget side
  2. Removal of MountingPortal, which is now better solved with Teleport, save for one edge case (multiple prop) for which we will cover a migration path further down.

List of Changes

Installation

As the global API of creating a Vue app and registering Plugins changed a bit, you also need to adapt your Plugin installation a bit.

See the chapter on Installation for further instructions.

Portal Component

slim prop removed

In Vue 3, components no longer require a root element, so slim is no longer necessary. Portal will no longer render a root element, independent of the number of elements in its slot content.

If you need a wrapping element, wrap <portal> in an element yourself:

html
<!-- Renders no element -->
<portal to="someTarget"></portal>

<!-- Wrap it in an element if you need it encapsulated i.e. for styling -->
<div>
  <portal to="someTarget"></portal>
</div>

PortalTarget Component

slim prop removed

In Vue 3, components no longer require a root element, so slim is no longer necessary. Portal will no longer render a root element, independent of the number of elements in its slot content.

If you need a wrapping element, wrap <portal> in an element yourself:

html
<!-- will not render its content in a root element -->
<portal-target name="someTarget" />

<!-- Wrap it in an element if you need it encapsulated i.e. for styling -->
<div>
  <portal-target name="someTarget" />
</div>

New: v-slot:wrapper

You can now pass an additional named slot to PortalTarget that can be used to wrap the contents coming from multiple Portal in markup individually:

html
<portal-target>
<portal-target name="target">
  <template v-slot:wrapper="nodes">
    <div class="some fancy box styles">
      <component :is="node" v-for="node in nodes" />
    </div>
  </template>
</portal-target>

See: PortalTarget API: Wrapper slot

transition, transition-events props removed.

Instead of these props, you can now use the new v-slot:wrapper to wrap content in <transition> or <transition-group> components. See the docs for more info here

Removed: MountingPortal

This component was removed. Depending on your use case, you have two alternative migration paths:

  1. You move content from one Portal only: Use Vue's own Teleport instead (Teleport docs)
  2. You want to move content from multiple Places to the same mounted Portal: use createPortalTarget() utility function:
html
<template>
  <portal to="target-name">
    <p>This is the content to move</p>
  </portal>
</template>

<script>
import { createPortalTarget } from 'portal-vue'

export default {

  created() {
    createPortalTarget('#id-of-target-element', {
      name: 'target-name'
      // portal props
    })
  }
}
</script>

In practice, you would likely call this function somewhere more global once, so that all other Portalcomponents can move content this single PortalTarget.

Wormhole

The wormhole is the connecting "store" between the Portal and PortalTarget components. in PortalVue 2, it was a singleton, which meant that all apps and libraries on one page shared the same namespace for to="" names.

PortalVue 3 still provides a default instance to all components in an app when installing the plugin, but now you can optionally create your own instance and use that instead of the default one.

Read more here

Testing