shiva 🔱

shiva is a minimal JavaScript library for building user interfaces.

Declarative
Describe component behaviour with a standard JavaScript syntax and shiva will efficiently update views when your data changes. Declarative views make your code more predictable, simpler to understand, and easier to debug.

Modular
Build encapsulated components that manage their own state, then compose them to make complex UIs. Since component logic is written in JavaScript instead of templates, you can easily pass data through your app and keep state out of the DOM.

State management
Render views with a simple unidirectional data binding syntax.

Installation

npm install shiva --save

shiva is distributed as an ES module. Use a module aware build tool to import functions.
See https://bitbucket.org/gabrielmccallin/shiva-site for an example of how to include shiva in a project.

Getting started

Create root container

The container() function creates HTML elements and declares attributes, children, events, styles and many other properties.

import { container } from 'shiva';
 
const app = () => {
    container({
        root: true,
        textContent: 'Hi there 🙋‍'
    });
};
 
app();

This will append a HTMLElement <div> to the body of the page with text content of 'Hi there 🙋‍'.

Create container

import { container } from 'shiva';
 
const view = container({
    textContent: `I'm a view`
});

Add child containers

const view = container({
    textContent: `I'm a view`,
    children: [
        container({
            textContent: 'child 1 🙍‍'
        }),
        container({
            textContent: 'child 2 🙍‍'
        }),
    ]
});

Declare containers anywhere and add them to the view

const childFactory = () => {
    return container({
        textContent: 'child 1 🙍‍'
    });
};
 
const view = container({
    textContent: `I'm a view`,
    children: childFactory()
});
 

Event listeners

const clickHandler = e => {
    // do something
};
 
const clickMe = container({
    textContent: 'Click me!',
    events: [{
        name: 'click',
        handler: clickHandler
    }]
});

Configuration

container() takes a configuration object described by this interface:

interface ContainerConfig {
    attributes?: [key: string]: string | boolean | number | State;
    children?: HTMLElement[] | HTMLElement | State;
    events?: EventSchema[] | EventSchema;
    root?: boolean;
    style?: Partial<CSSStyleDeclaration> | State;
    tagName?: HTMLTagName;
}

• attributes An object to populate HTML attributes, keys are string, values are primitives or a State object.

• children A HTMLElement, array of HTMLElements to append to the container or State object.

• events An object or array of objects that describe a event type and handler to add to the container.

• root Appends the container to the body of the page. Use at the entrypoint of the application to attach all children to.

• style Style the element with inline css declarations, this can also be a State object.

• tagName Type of container, e.g. paragraph, input, anchor, select etc

Example

const app = container({
    textContent: 'Hello there 💋',
    tagName: 'p',
    id: 'viewA',
    attributes: {
        data-shiva: '🔱',
        ...otherAttributes
    },
    style: {
        color: 'blue',
        ...otherCSSStyles
    },
    children: [
        container({
            textContent: 'child 1'
        }),
        container({
            textContent: 'child 2'
        })
    ],
    events: [{
        name: 'custom',
        handler: customHandler
    }],
    root: true;
});

State

Declare one-way data binding to keep views up to date with data changes.

Setting state

Inspired by React hooks, useState() will return a tuple; the first item is a state variable, the second item a function to update the variable.

const [temperature, setTemperature] = useState('21');
 
const view = container({
    textContent: `${temperature}°C`,
});
// component shows 21°C
 
setTemperature('31');
// component shows 31°C ☀️

Setting state with a reducer function

Second parameter of useState() is a reducer function that will run every time the update function is called.

const addDegrees = temperature => `${temperature}°C`;
 
const [temperature, setTemperature] = useState('21', addDegrees);
 
const view = container({
    textContent: temperature,
});
// component shows 21°C
 
setTemperature('31');
// component shows 31°C ☀️

Access state value

A state variable is an object that contains all the properties required to update a container. The value that the container will be updated with can be accessed with .value;

const addDegrees = temperature => `${temperature}°C`;
 
const [temperature, setTemperature] = useState('21', addDegrees);
 
let value = temperature.value; // will be 21°C
 
const view = container({
    textContent: temperature,
});
// component shows 21°C
 
setTemperature('31');
// component shows 31°C ☀️
 
value = temperature.value; // will be 31°C

Use reducer for templating in the DOM

Container attributes only take a State object. If you want to template, use the reducer argument of useState().

const [temperature, setTemperature] = useState('21', addDegrees);
 
const view = container({
    textContent: `${temperature}°C`,
});
// No, this won't work
 
## License
 
[MIT license](./LICENSE).