Debugging Vue 3: How I Finally Solved My Dropdown Dilemma
As developers, we love to solve problems. It’s what we do best. So when I encountered an issue with a dropdown menu in Vue 3, I was confident I could find a solution quickly. But little did I know that the answer was right in front of me the whole time.
Let me set the scene. I was building a frontend in Vue 3 and needed to create a dropdown menu for language options. I used the <select> tag with <v-for>, and everything seemed to be working fine on desktop devices. But when I tested it on mobile, the dropdown simply wouldn’t open. I searched high and low for an error message or warning, but to no avail.
I was determined to fix the issue, so I turned to the most sophisticated state management solutions, such as watch functions, storeToRefs in Pinia, onMounted and onUpdated lifecycle hooks. But none of these worked, and I was at a loss.
Desperate for help, I turned to Stack Overflow, hoping someone could shed some light on the situation. But after days of waiting for a response, I realized I needed to take matters into my own hands.
Finally, I decided to read the Vue 3 documentation. And there it was, in all its glory: the solution to my problem. I had overlooked the simple fact that selectors like v-model, emit, etc don’t work inside <option> tag and should be put inside <select>, which was causing the dropdown to malfunction on mobile devices.
Before:
<select>
<option
v-for="language in langs"
:key="language.text"
@click="emit('changeLang', language.value)"
>
{{ language.flag }} {{ language.text }}
</option>
</select>
After introducing one extra const lang = ref(‘en’)
in my <script setup>:
<select
@change="emit('changeLang', lang)"
v-model="lang"
>
<option
v-for="language in langs"
:key="language.text"
:value="language.value"
>
{{ language.flag }} {{ language.text }}
</option>
</select>
And voila you can see it working here. I couldn’t believe it. After days of frustration, the answer was so simple.
As programmers, we often overlook the obvious and get lost in the complexity of our code. But sometimes, the simplest solution is the best one. And in this case, all it took was a quick glance at the documentation.
So, let this be a lesson to all of us. Don’t underestimate the power of documentation, and don’t be afraid to seek out help when you’re stuck. With the right resources and a little bit of determination, we can overcome any problem that comes our way.