skooma-js/doc/html-proxy.md

3.7 KiB

Skooma.js

import {html} from "skooma.js"

A functional-friendly helper library for procedural DOM generation and templating, with support for reactive state objects.

Summary

html.button(
	"Clicki Me!",
	{
		class: "primary",
		click({target}) {
			console.log("User clicked", target)
		}
	},
	button => { console.log("Created", button) }
)
  • elements as functions content -> element
  • content as arguments or in arrays
  • attributes in object arguments
  • style, dataset, shadow root, etc. as magic attributes
  • events as function attributes
  • initialisers as void -> void functions

Interface / Examples

Basic DOM generation

Accessing the html proxy with any string key returns a new node generator function. When called this function will generate a DOM node (HTML Tag). The name of the function becomes the tag name of the node.

html.div()

Content and attributes can be set via the function arguments: Strings and DOM nodes are inserted as children, while other objects (except for some special cases) have their key-value pairs turned into attribute-value pairs on the

html.div("Big Text", {style: "font-size: 1.4em"})

Arrays are iterated and their values treated as arguments. This works both for inserting children and setting attributes.

const content = [" ps: hi", {class: "title"}]
html.h1({id: "main-heading"}, "Heading", content)

Function arguments are treated differently depending on their length:] Functions with no named parameters are called, and their return value is then evaluated just like an argument to the generator.

All other functions are (immediately) called with the newly created node as their first and only argument. These can be used to initialise the new node in a point-free style.

const hello = () => html.bold("Hello, World!")
const init = node => console.log("Initialising", node)
html.div(hello, init)

Nested tags can be generated with nested function calls. When properly formatted, this means simpler templates will have the same structure as if written in HTML (sans those pesky closing tags).

html.div(
    html.p(
        html.b("Bold Text")
    )
)

Attribute Processing

For convenience, arrays assigned as attributes will be joined with spaces:

html.a({class: ["button", "important"]})

Assigning a function as an attribute will instead attach it as an event listener:

html.button("Click me!", {click: event => {
    alert("You clicked the button.")
}})

The special style property can be set to an object and its key/value pairs will be inserted as CSS properties on the element's style object.

const style = { color: "salmon" }
html.span("Salmon", { style })

The special property shadowRoot will attach a shadow-DOM to the element if none is present and append its content to the shadow root. Arrays are iterated over and their elements appended individually.

html.div({
   shadowRoot = ["Hello, ", html.b("World"), "!"]
})

The dataset property will add its key/value pairs to the new node's dataset, as a more convenient alternative to setting individual data- attributes.

const dataset = { foo: "bar" }
const div = html.div({dataset})
console.log(dataset.foo === div.dataset.foo)
console.log(div.getAttribute("data-foo") === "bar")

Reactivity

Skooma supports reactivity through a simple protocol:

Observable objects identify themselves with the observable attribute, which must return a truthy value.

Observables are expected to expose a value attribute that is both readable and writeable, and to emit a "change" event whenever its vale has changed.

Observables can be used both as attribute values as well as for child elements.

TODO: Explain what actually happens