Unlock the Power of Moon.js: A Lightweight Library for Functional User Interfaces
What is Moon.js?
Moon.js is a tiny, 2KB library that’s changing the game for functional user interfaces. By harnessing the power of pure functions, Moon.js tackles the complexity of modern applications, providing a minimal and fast solution for building robust UIs.
Solving Real-World Problems
Moon.js addresses the need for third-party libraries to handle effects beyond updating views. By leveraging drivers, Moon.js simplifies the process of managing views, state, HTTP requests, routing, and more.
Key Features Out of the Box
Moon.js comes packed with a range of features, including:
- Time Driver: Provides the current time and allows scheduling of application functions
- Storage Driver: Offers access to localStorage for persisting data in the browser
- HTTP Driver: Enables sending and receiving HTTP requests and responses
- Route Driver: Grants access to the pathname of the route in a browser
Building a Blogging Application with Moon.js and JSONPlaceholder API
Let’s put Moon.js into action by building a blogging application that leverages the JSONPlaceholder API. We’ll start by installing Moon.js using the CLI, followed by bootstrapping a Moon project.
Adding Tailwind CSS for Default Styles
To give our application a stylish makeover, we’ll add Tailwind CSS to the mix. This will provide a solid foundation for our UI.
Fetching Data from JSONPlaceholder API
Next, we’ll create a feature to fetch data from the JSONPlaceholder API and display it on the browser. We’ll implement pagination, fetching only the first post initially, and then subsequent posts on button clicks.
Defining the HTML Structure and Components
We’ll define the HTML structure of our layout, creating components for the navbar and posts. The navbar component will display a dummy navigation bar, while the post component will show the fetched posts along with a button to fetch the next post.
Handling HTTP Requests with Moon.js
Moon.js’s HTTP driver accepts a list of HTTP requests as output, allowing us to specify properties like method, url, headers, body, responseType, onLoad, and onError. We’ll use this to fetch the next post from the API and render it on the browser.
Putting it all Together
With our components and HTTP request handling in place, we’ll update our main.js file to render the home component once the API request is complete. Finally, we’ll visit http://localhost:8080/ to see our application in action!
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