x-action

Library for binding events to custom elements-based controllers.

npm install @intrnl/x-action
pnpm install @intrnl/x-action
yarn add @intrnl/x-action

Why?

While working with libraries and frameworks like React and Svelte has been very fun, I found it to be rather overkill for working on simple projects.

I've found Stimulus approach with controllers to snug neatly in between React and manual DOM bindings, but I didn't feel like committing entirely into its paradigm and would prefer something that I can quickly iterate on if situation ever calls for it.

The existence of custom elements/Web Components has also made it unnecessary for a library like this to have to manage controllers and their lifecycles, which allows this library to be under 800 bytes in size when gzip'd.

Getting started

x-action, as the library name would suggest, would use the x-action attribute to bind events to a corresponding controller.

Note
The controller in question must be a standalone custom element, and not a custom element that extends/inherits an existing built-in element. See here for details

Example

Note
The x-target attribute isn't mandatory, nor does it come from this library, but it's recommended that you do this when targetting a specific element from a controller.

<hello-world>
  <input type='text' x-target='hello-world.name'>

  <button x-action='click:hello-world#greet'>
    Greet
  </button>
</hello-world>

import '@intrnl/x-action';

class HelloWorldElement extends HTMLElement {
  #name = this.querySelector(`[x-target~='hello-world.name']`);

  greet () {
    const message = `Hello, ${this.#name.value}!`;
    alert(message);
  }
}

customElements.define('hello-world', HelloWorldElement);

Action Syntax

The action syntax follows a pattern of event:target#method

• event is the name of a DOM event, e.g. click or input
• target is the name of a controller in the ancestry
• method is the name of a public method in the controller, this could be omitted where it will default to handleEvent

Binding Actions to Self

Note that you can also use this as target, where it will point to the element where that action is being defined on, assuming that the element is a controller. This is very useful for dealing with nested controllers.

<x-tree>
  <!-- this will bind `click` to the upper `x-tree` controller -->
  <x-tree x-action='click:x-tree#foo'>
  </x-tree>

  <!-- this will bind `click` to itself -->
  <x-tree x-action='click:this#foo'>
  </x-tree>
<x-tree>

Configuration

There will not be any sort of configuration, whether it's changing the attribute name used for binding, etc.

The simplistic nature of x-action means that you are very much encouraged to copy the source code directly to your own project, feel free to do so in order to make it fit to your own needs.