can-hyperscript

Create HyperText with JavaScript and CanJS live binding.

This is an experimental library and all APIs are subject to change. Feedback is welcome - feel free to open issues with suggestions and feature requests.

What is HyperScript

HyperScript is a way to create HyperText (the HT in HTML) with JavaScript. It looks something like this:

import h from 'hyperscript';
 
h('div#menu', { style: { 'background-color': 'orange' } },
    h('ul',
        h('li', 'Burger'),
        h('li', 'Hot Dog'),
        h('li', 'French Fries')
    )
);

Use with CanJS Observables

can-hyperscript allows you to use HyperScript with live-binding to CanJS observables.

can-compute

If a compute is passed as an attribute or child node, can-view-live will be used to update the HTML when the value of the compute changes.

import h from 'can-hyperscript';
import compute from 'can-compute';
 
const message = compute('Hello, World!');
const headerClass = compute('big-h1');
const frag = h('h1', { class: headerClass }, [ message ]);
 
frag.outerHTML; // <h1 class="big-h1">Hello, World!</h1>
 
message('Hello, Mars!');
headerClass('bigger-h1');
 
frag.outerHTML; // <h1 class="bigger-h1">Hello, Mars!</h1>

Map / DefineMap

To use with other CanJS observable types, you can pass a function as an attribute or child node (this example is using arrow functions). These functions will be turned into computes:

import h from 'can-hyperscript';
import DefineMap from 'can-define/map/map';
 
const data = new DefineMap({
  message: 'World',
  class: 'big-h1'
});
const frag = h('h1', { class: () => data.class }, [ () => `Hello, ${data.message}!` ]);
 
frag.outerHTML; // <h1 class="big-h1">Hello, World!</h1>
 
data.class = 'bigger-h1';
data.message = 'Mars';
 
frag.outerHTML; // <h1 class="bigger-h1">Hello, Mars!</h1>

Use with CanJS Components

can-hyperscript provides a few helpers to make working with can-components simple.

render

can-hyperscript/lib/component provides a render function for rendering the view for a component. This render function will take the Scope of the component, turn it in to an object, and pass it to your view function. You can use properties from the object in your view function using normal bracket or dot-notation.

import h from 'can-hyperscript';
import { render } from 'can-hyperscript/lib/component';
import DefineMap from 'can-define/map/map';
import Component from 'can-component';
 
const ViewModel = DefineMap.extend({
  message: { value: 'Hello, World!' }
});
 
const view = data => {
    return h('h1', () => data.message);
};
 
Component.extend({
  tag: 'my-component',
  ViewModel: ViewModel,
  view: render(view)
});

hyperComponents mixin

There is also a mixin available to allow you to render can-components using hyperscript:

import baseH from 'can-hyperscript';
import { hyperComponents } from 'can-hyperscript/lib/component';
 
const h = hyperComponents(baseH);
 
document.body.appendChild(
  h('my-component', {})
);