Templiteral

Templiteral is a light-weight tool to reactively generate and update markup in-browser without the need for any framework or dependencies. Designed to work with the customElements spec, Templiteral can be used to manage native data, property and event bindings using familiar syntax without the need for an external compiler or complicated build tools.

Try templiteral for yourself on CodePen.

Installation

Install with npm or yarn.

npm i templiteral
# OR
yarn add templiteral

How it Works

The templiteral function takes two optional arguments (a location and a context) and returns a function that serves as an ECMAScript 2015 template literal tag, a function that takes in a template literal and returns some other object. Repeated calls to this function will update the previously-inserted DOM nodes if a binding is present.

So a template literal tag would look like the following:

function myTag(strings, ...values) {
  return strings.map((string, index) => `${string} values[index]`).join('');
}
const message = 'world';
myTag`Hello ${message}`; // Hello world

If the arguments aren't present, both will default to the call site's this and the relevant shadowRoot if one is present.

The templiteral function returns a tag function that serves as a renderer.

Example

The following example uses ESNext features and ECMAScript modules which might not be supported by all browsers:

import { templiteral } from 'templiteral';

class MyEl extends HTMLElement {
  #templiteral = templiteral;

  constructor() {
    super();
    this.attachShadow({ mode: 'open' });
    this.username = 'templiteral';
  }

  connectedCallback() {
    this.render();
  }

  render() {
    this.#templiteral()`
      <h1>Hello ${this.username}</h1>
      <p>You're alright.</p>
    `;
  }
}

customElements.define('my-el', MyEl);

Now when an instance of my-el is inserted into the DOM, the render method will be called and insert the template into the element's shadow root.

Event bindings

Templiteral provides Angular-style event bindings using the (<eventName>)="${this.eventHandler}" syntax.

<button (click)="${this.logClickEvent}">Log a message</button>

This would call the component's logClickEvent with the event object as the argument. As you might expect, you can also pass object properties or other arguments in the function invocation as well.

Property bindings

Similar to the event bindings above, property bindings use the bracket notation [<propertyName>]="${this.someProp}".

<input type="text" id="username" name="username" [required]="${this.isRequired}" [value]="${this.username}">

Component base

Templiteral exports a Component abstract class that provides a significant boilerplate for building custom elements. By utilizing the built-in static getter boundAttributes which returns an array of property names, you will keep your attribute and property vaules in sync.

If a bound attribute is a boolean value, the component supports a static getter booleanAttributes. Note that all boolean attributes must also be bound attributes.

If an attribute is also set inside the static boundProps array, it will be reflected inside the component itself. The state, property and attribute will all be bound together. A change to one will be reflected in the others.

In addition, Component's render method will be called when any bound attribute changes. Along with the renderer, a new element method, html serves as an alias for this.templiteral():

See this demo on CodePen.

import { Component } from 'templiteral';

class HelloWorld extends Component {
  static get boundAttributes() { return ['who', 'now']; }

  constructor() {
    super();
    this.state = {
      who: this.getAttribute('who'),
      now: new Date().toLocaleString()
    };
    this.interval = setInterval(this.updateTime.bind(this), 100);
  }
  
  onDestroy() {
    window.clearInterval(this.interval);
  }
 
  updateTime() {
    this.now = new Date().toLocaleString();    
  }
 
  render() {
    this.html`
      <h1>Hello ${this.state.who}</h1>
      <p>${this.state.now}</p>
    `;
  }
}
 
customElements.define('hello-world', HelloWorld);

The <hello-world who="world"></hello-world> element would now have attributes in sync with the data and would automatically re-render the time every 100 milliseconds.

The Component base class also includes a custom event emitter utility simply called emit. Component.emit takes two arguments, the first is a string representing the CustomEvent name and the second is the detail object on the event for passing information outside of the component. These events are, by default, composed so they will bubble through barriers in the shadow DOM if one is attached.

See this demo on CodePen.

import { Component } from 'templiteral';

class EmitExample extends Component {
  render() {
    this.html`
      <button (click)=${() => this.emit('button-clicked', new Date())}">Will emit an event called <code>button-clicked</code></button>`;
  }
}

One caveat to using Component is that the immediate renderer will not be called until all boundAttributes have been defined. Typically this should be done in the constructor, connectedCallback or onInit; however, when you override the constructor, connectedCallback or disconnectedCallback methods, make sure to call the method on super first to preserve functionality. onInit is a utility method that gets called when the component is done appending content to the DOM.

Element references

Similar to React, you can create a simple element reference inside your template with the ref attribute:

<input type="text" id="username" ref="username">

and in your component file:

this.username = this.refs.username.value;

If you intend to perform some action on element references, it is probably best to use the onInit lifecycle method described above.

Property updated hooks

When a property is updated, often a developer will want to be notified. This is accomplished using the Component.prototype.updatedHooks API. updatedHooks is a JavaScript Map object that takes a property name and a callback function with the argument signature of value: any, attributeName: string. This callback will not be called on the initial setting of the property value, but will be called on all subsequent calls to the property's setter.

import { Component } from 'templiteral'; 
class MyEl extends Component {
  static get boundAttributes() { return ['title']; }
  constructor() {
    super();

    this.updatedHooks.set('title', this._titleUpdated);
  }

  render() { /** Omitted */ }

  _titleUpdated(newTitle, attributeName) {
    /** Omitted */
  }
}

Array templates

Loops are created using the built-in Array prototype methods and the use of the fragment function. fragment takes in a unique key for each element in the array. Normally, the item's index should suffice, but in cases where there will be significant re-rendering, something else might be necessary.

<ul>
  ${this.todos = todo => this.fragment(todo)`
    <li>
      <label>
        <input type="checkbox" (change)="${this.done}">
        ${todo.title}
      </label>
    </li>
  `}
</ul>

The fragment's this methods will still be referenced to the containing component.

Conditional templates

To show/hide elements based on some condition, use the condition function. When used in a Component, you can use the element's built-in if method:

${this.if(this.showTodos)`
  <ul>
    ${this.todos = todo => this.fragment(todo)`
      <li>
        <label>
          <input type="checkbox" (change)="${this.done}">
          ${todo.title}
        </label>
      </li>
    `}
  </ul>
`}

Styling components

The previous method of styling components from version 3.x.x has been deprecated in favor of implementing the constructible style sheets/adopted style sheets proposal. This package currently consumes the construct style sheets polyfill to aid in styling components inside shadow roots.

import { Component } from 'templiteral';

/** Construct a new style sheet */
const exampleStyles = new CSSStyleSheet();

/** Replace the contents of the style sheet */
exampleStyles.replace('* { color: tomato; }')
  .then(console.log);

class StyleExample extends HTMLElement {
  constructor() {
    super();
    this.attachShadow({ mode: 'open' });
    /** Adopt the style sheet */
    this.shadowRoot.adoptedStyleSheets = [exampleStyles];
  }

  render() {
    this.html`<h1>Hello world, this is tomato colored</h1>`;
  }
}