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Vue: When a computed property can be the wrong tool

Thorsten Lünborg on September 05, 2021

If you're a Vue user, you likely know computed properties, and if you are like me, you probably think they are awesome - rightfully so! To me, com...
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Valentin Berlier •

My first thought was to put the expensive operation (reversing the list) in its own computed:

const reversedList = computed(() => [...list].reverse())
const sortedList = computed(() => {
  return isOver100.value ? reversedList.value : [...list]
})
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This way even though the sortedList computed property is updated often, it always uses the cached reversedList because Vue knows that reversedList only depends on the original list.

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linusborg profile image
Thorsten Lünborg •

Good idea, but in the example, sortedList was meant to be imagined as an expensive operation, mimicked by [...list] that operation still happens each time the count is increased and is still <101.

So this can be a way to work around the described problem in some scenarios but doesn't completely fit the imagined scenario here.

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Valentin Berlier •

Hmm yeah, but if it's the sorting that's expensive then you could have a computed property for the sortedList instead. It's the same thing, the idea is to separate the expensive operation into its own computed property.

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Josh Corbett •

While you may be right here, I don't think this is supposed to be a perfect example.

yes, this example is silly. Deal with it.

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Alexey Antipov •

Nice article and nice catch about the computed functions.

Thanks for thorough explanation on how computed props are excecuted and cached.
It's really usefull to bear that lazy nature of computed props in mind when you have lots of them and they depend on each other.

I spotted some mistakes though, which made it difficult to follow the article

  1. According to the example, the openTodos relies on todo.done prop, and not just todos.length. Hence, the highlited statement is wrong.
    I believe you just forgot to update your example, becase in the end of the article there is another example where openTodos does depend on todos.length

  2. The example in the "When lazy evaluation can improve performance" section is outdated and is not the same as the one used in the Playground:
    -- no "Toggle ListView" btn in the template
    -- "hasOpenTodos" is not used in the template as well
    -- "addTodo" function uses unknown "todo.value" vs "newTodo.value"

Please review the examples and the text

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linusborg profile image
Thorsten Lünborg •

Thanks for the review. I fixed the example in your second point.

About the first point: It's not actually wrong in the place you thought, just an imrecise statement- the filter method would indeed not be run if the length of todos doesn't change - except if you would mutate the array with something like .reverse() or .sort().

But the example at the end of the article you refer to is indeed a copy-paste error from the initial example, so I fixed that to refer to openTodos.

Thanks again

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Alexey Antipov • • Edited

I tend to disagree :)

const todos = reactive([
  { title: 'Wahs Dishes', done: true},
  { title: 'Throw out trash', done: false }
])

const openTodos = computed(
  () => todos.filter(todo => !todo.done)
)
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Reactive todos is deeply reactive, right?
So if you change "done" prop of any of the todos, then the computed openTodos will need to be reevaluated and rerun the filter method even though the length stays the same.

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linusborg profile image
Thorsten Lünborg •

Argh. It's so hard to come up with good examples 😭

Yes you are right in this case - I wasn't really paying attention to what the filter did. 😬

Will see if I can change it to be more precise.

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yongjun21 profile image
Yong Jun • • Edited

I actually encountered similar issue but arrived at a different solution:

function useMemo<T>(reference: Ref<T>, getKey: (v: T) => unknown = v => v) {
  let memo: Ref<T>;
  return computed(() => {
    if (!memo) {
      memo = ref(reference.value) as Ref<T>;
      watch(
        () => getKey(reference.value),
        (key, prevKey) => {
          memo.value = reference.value;
        },
        { flush: 'sync' }
      );
    }
    return memo.value;
  });
}
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Wrote a useMemo function that returns a wrapped reference that triggers downstream watcher only when some memorization key from the original reference changed. Hence combining the best of computed and watch.

Need to point out that there some difference in my requirement hence eagerComputed not suitable. In my case

  1. I need the computed to stay lazy.
  2. The computed value is an object reconstructed on every compute so referential equality used in eagerComputed will fail.
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nmhung2022 profile image
Simple is the best •

Excellent work!

Note: If you are using Vue 3.4+, you can straight use computed instead.
Because in Vue 3.4+, if computed new value does not change, computed, effect, watch, watchEffect, render dependencies will not be triggered.
refer: github.com/vuejs/core/pull/5912

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Bob Bass •

This is an excellent article. I'm going from memory here but I could swear that some Vue components I've built in the past always seemed one tick behind where they were supposed to be.

I'm pretty sure that I've had to use watch() to fix the problem but I might also be conflating a slightly different issue with this.

Either way, this was really interesting and I'm glad that you took the time to write about it.

I switched from Vue to React within the past year or so for many of my personal projects and so I've been out of the loop a little bit, but I just took a job working with Vue. I feel like I've missed so much in the past few months. I was still using the options API with Vue 3 and without a setup directive and then I saw Vitesse.

Vue is such an awesome framework.

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Thorsten Lünborg •

Glad you found it helpful.

the issue you describe sounds like it's not related to what I am describing here. Lazy evaluation won't cause any timing issues.

Also, don't feel pressures to use setup() if you feel comfortable with Options API - i won't disappear or anything.

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JZ JavaScript Corner •

Hmm. I always assumed that since isOver100 would evaluate to false again, that sortedList would not see it as dirty because, although the computed ran again, it didn't change value, therefore sortedList would not have seen a change that would require a re-compute.

Also, this issue could be solved in a similar manner to Valentin Berlier's idea (other commenter), but slightly different:

const reversedList = computed(() => [...list].reverse())
const sortedList = computed(() => [...list])
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Then in the template...

<ul v-if="isOver100">
    <li v-for="item in reversedList">
      {{ item }}
    </li>
</ul>
<ul v-else>
    <li v-for="item in sortedList">
      {{ item }}
    </li>
</ul>
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Right?

I can think of at least one more possible solution too, even closer to what Valentin stated, but in the end, that's not the point. Your point is to raise awareness of how this works so that we can be mindful and be able to fix/avoid it when we come across it.

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Jeff Galbraith •

An easy fix to this example situation would be to add a key on the button with the value of counter

<button :key="counter" @click="increase">
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dajpes profile image
dajpes •

Can you explain why adding a key solves the problem?

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hawkeye64 profile image
Jeff Galbraith •

Vue uses keys for deterministic re-evaluation. It's use case is typically for loops, but a key can be used on any component/element. When a key changes, that forces Vue to do a re-evaluation.

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Roland Doda •

Nope, additing key on the button would not make any difference

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Omar •

Hi, since you have a deep knowledge about computed property, could you write an article about using computed property with argument?

In my project, ive always encounter needing dynamic computed property especially when i want to use computed property in v-for loop where i need to get the index of the current item for the computed property. what i normally do is i created computed property that return a function that has one or more argument. ive read online this is not beneficial and the result are not being cached and the author suggest just to use normal function. so i would like to know is there any alternative to do this?

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qq449245884 •

Dear Thorsten Lünborg，may I translate your article into Chinese?I would like to share it with more developers in China. I will give the original author and original source.

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Yong Jun •

Not sure how using plain function solve the over100 example. If you replace the over100 computed with a plain function, sortedList will then be directly dependent on count.value so it will still be re-computed 100 times, no?

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Thorsten Lünborg • • Edited

Wrote it in another comment:

It's so hard to come up with examples that are not about foo & bar and still demonstrate what you want to without being overly complex or missing the point 😅

Yes, a plain function would not help in that specific scenario. It can help in others.

I've already planned to revisit this article and add/change a few things to make my points more clear. For now, I added a note about this so people don't get a wrong impression.

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Oskar Szulc •

What's your recommended approach to debug/detect the unnecessary render calls? Or track the "render queue" for lack of better term? :)