shadow

Shadow is simple base class for creating fast, lightweight web components with htm.
Do it all with deno bundle: No transpiler or other tools are required.

Quick Start

Compile example/my_example.ts:

deno bundle --config example/tsconfig.json example/my_example.ts > example/my_example.js

Serve the index.html file:

deno run --allow-net --allow-read https://deno.land/std/http/file_server.ts example/

Print the documented API:

deno doc mod.ts

Example

import {
  Attribute,
  css,
  customElement,
  html,
  property,
  Shadow,
} from "https://deno.land/x/shadow/mod.ts"

@customElement("my-example")
export class MyExample extends Shadow {
  colors = ["yellow", "green", "pink", "red", "blue", "orange"]
  @property()
  h1Content = 0
  @property()
  firstContent: Attribute = null
  @property()
  secondContent: Attribute = null
  @property({ reflect: false, wait: true })
  items: string[] = []
  @property({ reflect: false })
  anchorAttributes: { href?: string; ping?: string; target?: string } = {}

  static styles = css`
    h1 {
      color: blue;
    }
    #myButton {
      border-radius: 30px;
    }
    .text {
      margin: 50px;
      color: brown;
    }
    a {
      color: blue;
    }
    .myLi {
      width: 200px;
      background-color: pink;
    }
  `

  render() {
    return html`<h1>${this.h1Content}</h1>
      <button id="myButton" click=${this.clickHandler}>Count</button>
      <p class="text">You can change values through...</p>
      <p class="text">${this.firstContent}</p>
      <p class="text">${this.secondContent}</p>
      <ul>
        ${this.items.map((item) => html`<li @class="myLi">${item}</li>`)}
      </ul>
      <p class="text"><a ...${this.anchorAttributes}>Anchor Text</a></p>`
  }

  updated() {
    this.dom.class["myLi"].forEach((li, i) =>
      setInterval(
        () =>
          (li.style.background = this.colors[Math.floor(Math.random() * 6)]),
        500
      )
    )
  }

  clickHandler(e: MouseEvent) {
    return this.h1Content++
  }
}

You can find the index.html file here.

API

class Shadow extends HTMLElement

This class is the reason why you are here.

constructor()

connected: boolean

This boolean will be true when connectedCallback has been called and all explicitly awaited properties have been set (the waitingList is empty).

shadowRoot: ShadowRoot

dom: Dom

The child elements, which match the id and class selectors marked with the @ sign, are stored in the dom object.

static styles: HTMLTemplateElement[]

The return type of the function css, which is an array of HTMLTemplateElements containing a script element, is assigned to this static property.

static is?: string

The decorator customElement - if used - sets this static property to the custom element’s tag name automatically.

connectedCallback()

A native custom elements’ lifecycle callback. When you use this callback, you probably want to call super.connectedCallback() inside of it.

attributeChangedCallback(name: string, oldValue: Attribute, newValue: Attribute)

A native custom elements’ lifecycle callback. Here, it manages the reflecting of properties to attributes.

init(propertiesAndOptions: PropertyAndOptions[]): void

Call this method in ‘connectedCallback’ if you want to avoid using the ‘property’ decorator. It assigns the accessors to the element’s properties and starts rendering.

update(name: string, newValue: Attribute): void

Reflects properties to attributes.

render?(): AllowedExpressions

Is called by the method actuallyRender which renders the custom element. It must return the return type of the function html which is AllowedExpressions.

firstUpdated?(event: Event): void

A modifiable lifecycle callback which is called after the first update which includes rendering.

updated?(event: Event): void

A modifiable lifecycle callback which is called after each update which includes rendering.

function html(strings: TemplateStringsArray, …values: AllowedExpressions[]) => AllowedExpressions

Uses htm (Hyperscript Tagged Markup) under the hood which uses standard JavaScript Tagged Templates and works in all modern browsers. The function html takes a tagged template and processes the AllowedExpressions where false, null and undefined are converted to an empty string and the numbers are stringified. The elements matching the id and class selectors marked with an @ sign will later be added to the this.dom object. We add the EventListeners with addEventListener(event, listener.bind(this)) so that you don’t need to use arrow functions anymore. It parses SVG elements as well.

function css(strings: TemplateStringsArray, …values: (string | HTMLTemplateElement)[]): HTMLTemplateElement[]

The css tag function parses css strings which can contain expressions with the type string or HTMLTemplateElements (containing a script element).

function customElement(tagName: string): (clazz: Constructor) => void

The customElement decorator takes the tag name of the custom element and registers the custom element. The same tag name is assigned to the static is property.

function property({reflect, render, wait, assert}: Omit)

The property decorator takes an optional object as argument with four optional properties:

Setting reflect to false would stop the element’s attribute from synchronising.
If you don’t want the changing of the property to cause a rerendering, then set render to false.
If you plan to use properties instead of attributes as data input, setting wait to true would reduce the amount of renderings from 2 to 1 (you can just ignore it).
The assert boolean checks if the input has a truthy value.