reactive

Reactive template engine for robust real-time rendering of model data changes.

Installation

With component:

$ component install component/reactive

With the stand-alone browser build:

<script src="reactive.js"></script>

API

reactive(element, object, [view])

Bind object to the given element with optional view object. When a view object is present it will be checked first for overrides, which otherwise delegate to the model object.

For example if you have the following HTML:

<h1 data-text="name"></h1>

And pass the following object as the second argument:

{
  name: 'Tobi'
}

The output will become:

<h1>Tobi</h1>

However if you wish to manipulate the output or provided computed properties thae view object may be passed. For example an object of:

{
  first_name: "Tobi",
  last_name: "Ferret"
}

And a view of:

function UserView(user) {
  this.user = user;
}
 
UserView.prototype.name = function(){
  return this.user.first_name + ' ' + this.user.last_name;
}

Would produce:

<h1>Tobi Ferret</h1>

Typically a view object wraps a model to provide additional functionality, this may look something like the following:

function UserView(user) {
  this.user = user;
  this.el = reactive(tmpl, user, this);
}
 
UserView.prototype.name = function(){ ... }

Often a higher-level API is built on top of this pattern to keep things DRY but this is left to your application / other libraries.

Adapters

Subscriptions

Subscriptions allow reactive to know when an object's data has changed updating the DOM appropriately without re-rendering a static template. This means if you make manual DOM adjustments, append canvases etc they will remain intact.

By default reactive subscribes using .on("change <name>", callback) however it's easy to define your own subscription methods:

reactive.subscribe(function(obj, prop, fn){
  obj.bind(prop, fn);
});
 
reactive.unsubscribe(function(obj, prop, fn){
  obj.unbind(prop, fn);
});

Getting and Setting

You can make reactive compatible with your favorite framework by defining how reactive gets and sets the model.

By default reactive supports obj[prop] = val and obj[prop](val), but these can be changed with reactive.get(fn) and reactive.set(fn). Here's how to make reactive compatible with backbone:

reactive.get(function(obj, prop) {
  return obj.get(prop);
});
 
reactive.set(function(obj, prop, val) {
  obj.set(prop, val);
});

Interpolation

Bindings may be applied via interoplation on attributes or text. For example here is a simple use of this feature to react to changes of an article's .name property:

<article>
  <h2>{name}</h2>
</article>

Text interpolation may appear anywhere within the copy, and may contain complex JavaScript expressions for defaulting values or other operations.

<article>
  <h2>{ name || 'Untitled' }</h2>
  <p>Summary: { body.slice(0, 10) }</p>
</article>

Reactive is smart enough to pick out multiple properties that may be used, and react to any of their changes:

<p>Welcome { first + ' ' + last }.</p>

Interpolation works for attributes as well, reacting to changes as you'd expect:

<li class="file-{id}">
  <h3>{filename}</h3>
  <p><a href="/files/{id}/download">Download {filename}</a></p>
<li>

Declarative Bindings

By default reactive supplies bindings for setting properties, listening to events, toggling visibility, appending and replacing elements. Most of these start with "data-*" however this is not required.

data-text

The data-text binding sets the text content of an element.

data-html

The data-html binding sets the inner html of an element.

data-<attr>

The data-<attr> bindings allows you to set an attribute:

<a data-href="download_url">Download</a>

on-<event>

The on-<event> bindings allow you to listen on an event:

<li data-text="title"><a on-click="remove">x</a></li>

data-append

The data-append binding allows you to append an existing element:

<div class="photo" data-append="histogram">
 
</div>

data-replace

The data-replace binding allows you to replace an existing element:

<div class="photo" data-replace="histogram">
 
</div>

data-{show,hide}

The data-show and data-hide bindings conditionally add "show" or "hide" classnames so that you may style an element as hidden or visible.

<p data-show="hasDescription" data-text="truncatedDescription"></p>

data-checked

Toggles checkbox state:

<input type="checkbox" data-checked="agreed_to_terms">

Writing bindings

To author bindings simply call the reactive.bind(name, fn) method, passing the binding name and a callback which is invoked with the element itself and the value. For example here is a binding which removes an element when truthy:

reactive.bind('remove-if', function(el, name){
  el = $(el);
  var parent = el.parent();
  this.change(function(){
    if (this.value(name)) {
      el.remove();
    }
  });
});

Computed properties

Reactive supports computed properties denoted with the < character. Here the fullname property does not exist on the model, it is a combination of both .first and .last, however you must tell Reactive about the real properties in order for it to react appropriately:

<h1 data-text="fullname < first last"></h1>

NOTE: in the future Reactive may support hinting of computed properties from outside Reactive itself, as your ORM-ish library may already have this information.

Interpolation

Some bindings such as data-text and data-<attr> support interpolation. These properties are automatically added to the subscription, and react to changes:

<a data-href="/download/{id}" data-text="Download {filename}"></a>

Notes

Get creative! There's a lot of application-specific logic that can be converted to declarative Reactive bindings. For example here's a naive "auto-submit" form binding:

<div class="login">
  <form action="/user" method="post" autosubmit>
    <input type="text" name="name" placeholder="Username" />
    <input type="password" name="pass" placeholder="Password" />
    <input type="submit" value="Login" />
  </form>
</div>

var reactive = require('reactive');
 
// bind
 
var view = reactive(document.querySelector('.login'));
 
// custom binding available to this view only
 
view.bind('autosubmit', function(el){
  el.onsubmit = function(e){
    e.preventDefault();
    var path = el.getAttribute('action');
    var method = el.getAttribute('method').toUpperCase();
    console.log('submit to %s %s', method, path);
  }
});

For more examples view the ./examples directory.

License

MIT