Preact Server Renderer

preact-server-render is similar to preact-render-to-string by @developit (author of preact), but with pluggable formatters. This means you can easily tailer the output to your needs, without any overhead. Wether you have a snapshot renderer, or a custom format in mind. Performance wise, both libraries are equal, only the jsx renderer is a tiny bit faster here.

Installation

# npm
npm install preact-server-renderer

# yarn
yarn add preact-server-renderer

Usage

const {
  createRenderer,
  CompactRenderer,
  JsxRenderer,
} = require("preact-server-renderer");

// Default rendering
const render = createRenderer(new CompactRenderer());
const html = render(<div />);

// JSX rendering
const renderJsx = createRenderer(new JsxRenderer());
const html2 = renderJsx(<div />);

// shallow rendering
const shallow = createRenderer(new CompactRenderer(), { shallow: true });
const html3 = shallow(<div />);

CompactRenderer

The CompactRenderer is the standard html renderer. It doesn't add any whitespace and simply renders the components to a string.

Example:

const { createRenderer, CompactRenderer } = require("preact-server-renderer");

const render = createRenderer(new CompactRenderer());
console.log(
  render(
    <div class="foo">
      <h1>Hello</h1>
    </div>,
  ),
);

Output:

<div class="foo"><h1>Hello</h1></div>

JsxRenderer

This one is meant for snapshot tests, like they are found in jest.

Example:

const { createRenderer, JsxRenderer } = require("preact-server-renderer");

const render = createRenderer(new JsxRenderer());
console.log(
  render(
    <div class="foo">
      <h1>Hello</h1>
    </div>,
  ),
);

Output:

<div
  class="foo"
>
  <h1>
    Hello
  </h1>
</div>

Writing A Custom Renderer

This is where this library really shines. Custom renderers can be easily plugged into the createRenderer function. They basically have a few callbacks for the specific parsing steps. They simply need to adhere to the following interface and that's it!

interface Renderer<T> {
  output: T; // Can be anything you want

  /** Reset the current instance */
  reset(): void;

  /** Called when an attribute is parsed */
  onProp(
    name: string,
    value: string | boolean | undefined | null,
    depth: number,
  ): void;

  /** Called at the start of each new vnode object */
  onOpenTag(
    name: string,
    hasChildren: boolean,
    isVoid: boolean,
    depth: number,
  ): void;

  /** Called when attribute parsing is done for the current vnode */
  onOpenTagClose(
    name: string,
    hasAttributes: boolean,
    isVoid: boolean,
    hasChildren: boolean,
    depth: number,
  ): void;

  /** Called when the node is a simple string */
  onTextNode(text: string, depth: number): void;

  /** Called when all children of the current vnode are parsed */
  onCloseTag(name: string, isVoid: boolean, depth: number): void;

  /** Called when vnode has it's own html (f.ex. jQuery plugins) */
  onDangerousInnerHTML(html: string): void;
}

License

MIT, see LICENSE.md.