<±/> diffHTML

Latest version: 1.0.0-beta.18

At its core, diffHTML is an extremely lightweight and optimized HTML parser and Virtual DOM specifically designed for modern web UIs. These interfaces can be applications, games, data visualizations, or anything else that you may want to render in a web browser or Node.

The core works like a library, where you can import just one function and have a fully reactive VDOM rendering engine. When you opt into more functions and use the companion packages you get a framework for structuring your ideas.

Features

• Parses real HTML and supports JSX & Tagged Templates.
• Memory efficient VDOM rendering that utilizes object pooling.
• Transitions for animations and hooking into DOM changes.
• Powerful middleware extends diffHTML with additional features.
• Web and React-compatible stateful components.
• View and debug your code using the Chrome DevTools extension.
• A lite build which has a smaller size, meant for optimizing production code.

Packages

The following list of modules are nested in the /packages folder. They form the foundation of the diffHTML ecosystem.

• diffhtml

  npm install diffhtml
  

  The core public API for creating user interfaces. Contains a standard build which includes everything, and a smaller optimized build that excludes the HTML parser and performance metrics, which is useful for those who want to minimize the filesize.

• diffhtml-components

  npm install diffhtml-components
  

  Provides constructors and middleware to rendering stateful/stateless components seamlessly with diffHTML. The API will be very familiar to anyone who has used React as the class methods and structure is the same. While the APIs are very similar, if you want true React compatibility, check out the diffhtml-react-compat package.

• diffhtml-render-to-string

  npm install diffhtml-render-to-string
  

  Use to render your input to string. This is useful for server-side rendering, testing, and HTML/XML transformations.

• babel-plugin-transform-diffhtml

  npm install babel-plugin-transform-diffhtml
  

  Transforms your input into function calls. This eliminates the need for runtime parsing. This is similar to how React compiles down JSX.

• diffhtml-middleware-inline-transitions

  npm install diffhtml-middleware-inline-transitions
  

  By default diffHTML provides transition hooks at a global level. This middleware turns them into scoped, performant, event hooks.

• diffhtml-middleware-linter

  npm install diffhtml-middleware-linter
  

  This module will run various linting rules on your input to ensure you are writing valid/well-formed HTML. This was inspired by and uses rules from the HTMLHint project.

• diffhtml-middleware-logger

  npm install diffhtml-middleware-logger
  

  Logs out diffHTML state from the start and end of every render transaction.

• diffhtml-middleware-synthetic-events

  npm install diffhtml-middleware-synthetic-events
  

  Changes the event binding from inline event handlers like onclick = fn to use addEventListener. Events are attached to the body element and coordinated to children through delegation.

• diffhtml-middleware-verify-state

  npm install diffhtml-middleware-verify-state
  

  Asserts that a render properly updated the old Virtual Tree and the DOM. Will recursively search for inconsistencies, displays warnings unless debugging is enabled, then it throws errors instead.

• diffhtml-middleware-service-worker

  npm install diffhtml-middleware-service-worker
  

  Helps with the creation of a service worker for PWAs, available as a convenience to make development more friendlier.

• diffhtml-react-compat

  npm install diffhtml-react-compat
  

  Highly Experimental: This is a compatibility package meant to be a drop-in replacement for the modules: react and react-dom. It wraps the diffHTML Components package as the base for the component constructors. It then layers additional React-specific APIs.

• diffhtml-static-sync

  npm install diffhtml-static-sync
  

  Highly Experimental: A work-in-progress static HTML server that automatically reloads your markup as you save using Web Sockets.

• diffhtml-devtools

  Chrome Extension providing DevTools for inspecting and learning more about your running diffHTML code. Currently logs information about transactions, allows toggling active middleware, and displays some memory internals.

• diffhtml-website

  The source for the www.diffhtml.org website.