Exploring ArrowJS: A New Approach to Building Reactive User Interfaces
What is ArrowJS?
ArrowJS is an experimental tool that uses pure JavaScript to build reactive user interfaces. It leverages modern JavaScript features like template literals, modules, and proxies to implement its templating structure, observable data, and declarative/reactive DOM rendering capabilities.
// Example of using template literals in ArrowJS
const template = `
<div>
${name}
</div>
`;
Unlike many other JavaScript frameworks, ArrowJS has no dependencies, no Virtual DOM, no build tool, and no special templating language. This makes it ultra-fast and lightweight, weighing in at less than 3kB (min+Gzip).
Benefits of Using ArrowJS
- Build UIs with plain JavaScript: With ArrowJS, you can use your existing JavaScript knowledge to create powerful user interfaces without learning a new framework or language.
- Reactive programming model: ArrowJS’s reactive programming model allows your UI to update automatically whenever the underlying data changes, making it easy to build dynamic and responsive user interfaces.
- Lightweight and easy to use: ArrowJS has a simple API and a small footprint, making it easy to add to your projects without adding much extra code or complexity.
Getting Started with ArrowJS
There are three ways to set up an ArrowJS application: using a package manager, installing locally, or via CDN.
- Installation from a package manager: You can use npm or Yarn to install ArrowJS and take advantage of features like Hot Module Reloading.
npm install arrowjs - Installation from a local file system: Simply download the ArrowJS package from GitHub and add it to your project directly.
- Installation from a CDN: Just add a script tag to your HTML file and you’re good to go!
<script src="undefinedcdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/arrowjs@latest/dist/arrowjs.min.js"></script>
Understanding ArrowJS Building Blocks
ArrowJS is based on two composition expressions: static and reactive. The tool provides three functions for handling templating and reactivity capabilities:
- reactive (r): Converts generic data objects into observed data objects.
- watch (w): Tracks and untracks reactive properties.
- html (t): Creates and mounts Arrow templates to the DOM.
// Example of using reactive function
const data = { name: 'John' };
const observedData = r(data);
Feature Comparison
So how does ArrowJS compare to popular UI frameworks like React and Vue.js? Let’s take a look at some key features:
| Feature | ArrowJS | React | Vue.js |
|---|---|---|---|
| Module structure and syntaxes | Standard JavaScript script modules and native code and functions | Component-based approaches | Component-based approaches |
| Events | @ symbol to denote event listeners | camelCase naming conventions and directives | camelCase naming conventions and directives |
| Reactivity | Custom dependency class | Virtual DOM | Virtual DOM |
| Declarative rendering | Template literals | JSX or mustache syntax | JSX or mustache syntax |