Vue JS: Computed value vs. watcher

Question

I have 3 Booleans at the start, and if one of these 3 values changes by the user (e.g. HTML checkboxes), I want to set changed = true.

data()
  return {
    boolean1:false, //may initally be true/false
    boolean2:true,  //may initally be true/false
    boolean3:false, //may initally be true/false
    changed: false  //no changes to start with
  };
},

How do I track these 3 values properly in Vue? My impulse would be to use a watcher, but I now read several times that a computed property is the better choice for such tasks. Unfortunately, they didn't provide examples for such a simple tracking task, so how would a computed property look like? So far I have this:

computed: {
  comp_settings_change: function(){
    // if booleans change, set to true, else stay at false.
    return true
  }
},

Answer 1

A watcher is more appropriate than a computed prop in this case because the flag only needs to be set once.

You could use vm.$watch() on the Booleans, which returns a function to stop watching after the initial change, allowing you to create a one-shot callback:

export default {
  mounted() {
    const unwatch = this.$watch(
      () => [this.boolean1, this.boolean2, this.boolean3],
      value => {
        unwatch()
        this.changed = true
      }
    )
  },
}

demo