I hate compiling frontend code with complex toolchains, like webpack, rollup, vite etc. Unfortunately, most frontend frameworks heavily depends on them. Alpine.js is clean, powerful and without extra build process. While it is a challenge to develop a UI library directly with Alpine.js. Vimesh UI is an ultra lightweight library to build UI components for Alpine.js.
Just add Vimesh UI CDN url before Alpine.js
<script src="https://unpkg.com/@vimesh/ui"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/alpinejs" defer></script>
Now there are three important Alpine.js directives to build your own UI components
This directive creates an HTML native custom element around Alpine.js template.
<head>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/@vimesh/ui"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/alpinejs" defer></script>
</head>
<body>
<vui-greeting>Vimesh UI</vui-greeting>
<template x-component="greeting">
<h1>Hello <slot></slot></h1>
</template>
</body>
It shows Hello Vimesh UI
. Now let's add some interaction logic. There are two magics $api
and $prop
for a Vimesh UI component. $api
comes from the return object of the first <script>
inside of component template. $prop
is function to get the passed value of component property:
<head>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/@vimesh/ui"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/alpinejs" defer></script>
</head>
<body x-data="{name: 'Vimesh UI'}">
<vui-greeting greeting-word="Hi" :who="name"></vui-greeting>
<template x-component="greeting">
<h1><span x-text="$prop('greeting-word')"></span> <span x-text="$prop('who')"></span></h1>
<button @click="$api.say()">Click me</button>
<script>
return {
say() {
alert(this.$prop('greeting-word') + ' ' + this.$prop('who'))
}
}
</script>
</template>
</body>
The default custom element namespace is vui
, which could be modified in config. You could also give a different namespace with format x-component:{namespace}="component name"
<head>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/@vimesh/ui"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/alpinejs" defer></script>
<script>
$vui.config = {
namespace: 'myui'
}
</script>
</head>
<body x-data>
<myui-greeting>My UI</myui-greeting>
<new-greeting>My UI</new-greeting>
<template x-component="greeting">
<h1>Hello <slot></slot>
</h1>
</template>
<template x-component:new="greeting">
<h1>Hi <slot></slot>
</h1>
</template>
</body>
The final html result will be
...
<body x-data>
<myui-greeting><h1>Hello My UI
</h1></myui-greeting>
<new-greeting><h1>Hi My UI
</h1></new-greeting>
</body>
In some cases, we do not want the component tag to exist in the result. We could just add an unwrap
modifier in x-component
.
...
<body x-data>
<myui-greeting>My UI</myui-greeting>
<new-greeting>My UI</new-greeting>
<template x-component.unwrap="greeting">
<h1>Hello <slot></slot>
</h1>
</template>
<template x-component:new.unwrap="greeting">
<h1>Hi <slot></slot>
</h1>
</template>
</body>
The component tags myui-greeting
and new-greeting
will no longer exist in the final html result
...
<body x-data>
<h1>Hello My UI
</h1>
<h1>Hi My UI
</h1>
</body>
Of course, we don't want to embed common components in every page. The x-import
directive helps to load remote components asynchronously. Let's extract the greeting component into a standalone file.
/hello-remote.html
<head>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/@vimesh/ui"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/alpinejs" defer></script>
<script>
$vui.config.importMap = {
"*": './components/${component}.html'
}
</script>
<style>
[x-cloak] {
display: none !important;
}
</style>
</head>
<body x-cloak x-import="greeting">
<vui-greeting>Vimesh UI</vui-greeting>
</body>
/components/greeting.html
<template x-component="greeting">
<h1>Cloud Hello <slot></slot>
</h1>
</template>
The components could be loaded from anywhere, like
<script>
$vui.config.importMap = {
"*": 'https://unpkg.com/@vimesh/ui/examples/components/${component}.html'
}
</script>
x-import
could load components from different namespaces. The syntax is x-import="namespace1:comp11,comp12;namespace2:comp21,comp22;..."
. For default namespace, it could be omitted.
Here is a more complete example:
/counters.html
<head>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/@vimesh/style" defer></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/@vimesh/ui"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/alpinejs" defer></script>
<script>
$vui.config.importMap = {
"*": './components/${component}.html'
}
</script>
<style>
[x-cloak] {
display: none !important;
}
</style>
</head>
<body x-cloak x-import="counter;counter-trigger" class="p-2" x-data="{name: 'Counter to rename', winner: 'Jacky'}">
Rename the 2nd counter : <input type="text" x-model="name" class="rounded-md border-2 border-blue-500">
<vui-counter x-data="{step: 1}" :primary="true" title="First" x-init="console.log('This is the first one')" owner-name="Tom"></vui-counter>
<vui-counter x-data="{step: 5}" :title="name + ' @ ' + $prop('owner-name')" owner-name="Frank"></vui-counter>
<vui-counter x-data="{step: 10, value: 1000}" :owner-name="winner">
<vui-counter-trigger></vui-counter-trigger>
</vui-counter>
</body>
/components/counter.html
<template x-component.unwrap="counter" :class="$prop('primary') ? 'text-red-500' : 'text-blue-500'"
x-data="{ step : 1, value: 0}" x-init="$api && $api.init()" title="Counter" owner-name="nobody">
<div>
<span x-text="$prop('title')"></span><br>
Owner: <span x-text="$prop('owner-name')"></span><br>
Step: <span x-text="step"></span><br>
Value : <span x-text="value"></span><br>
<button @click="$api.increase()"
class="inline-block rounded-lg bg-indigo-600 px-4 py-1.5 text-white shadow ring-1 ring-indigo-600 hover:bg-indigo-700 hover:ring-indigo-700">
Increase
</button>
<slot></slot>
</div>
<script>
return {
init() {
console.log(`Value : ${this.value} , Step : ${this.step}`)
},
increase() {
this.value += this.step
}
}
</script>
</template>
/components/counter-trigger.html
<template x-component="counter-trigger">
<button @click="$api.$of('counter').increase()"
class="inline-block rounded-lg mt-2 bg-green-600 px-4 py-1.5 text-white shadow ring-1 ring-green-600 hover:bg-green-700 hover:ring-green-700">
Tigger from child element</button>
</template>
Add dynamic
modifier to x-import
, it will evaluate the express to a string or array and then import all these components. Please refer the example in examples/spa/app.html
.
<template x-component="router-view" x-shtml="$api && $api.pageContent || ''"
x-import:dynamic="$api && $api.pageToImport">
...
</template>
Set the autoImport
config to true
, Vimesh UI will automatically try to import all custom html elements. Most x-import
could be omitted. For example the previous counters.html
could be rewritten as
<head>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/@vimesh/style" defer></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/@vimesh/ui"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/alpinejs" defer></script>
<script>
$vui.config.importMap = {
"*": './components/${component}.html'
}
$vui.config.autoImport = true
</script>
<style>
[x-cloak] {
display: none !important;
}
</style>
</head>
<body x-cloak class="p-2" x-data="{name: 'Counter to rename', winner: 'Jacky'}">
Rename the 2nd counter : <input type="text" x-model="name" class="rounded-md border-2 border-blue-500">
<vui-counter x-data="{step: 1}" :primary="true" title="First" x-init="console.log('This is the first one')" owner-name="Tom"></vui-counter>
<vui-counter x-data="{step: 5}" :title="name + ' @ ' + $prop('owner-name')" owner-name="Frank"></vui-counter>
<vui-counter x-data="{step: 10, value: 1000}" :owner-name="winner">
<vui-counter-trigger></vui-counter-trigger>
</vui-counter>
</body>
Sometimes we just need to load a piece of html. The x-include
is convenient to use in this case. The unwrap
modifier is used to remove the host html tag.
/include-article.html
<head>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/@vimesh/ui"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/alpinejs" defer></script>
</head>
<body x-data>
Load into the external "div" tag:<br>
<div style="background-color: #888;" x-include="./static/article"></div>
Unwrap the external "div" tag:<br>
<div style="background-color: #888;" x-include.unwrap="./static/article"></div>
</body>
/static/article.html
<h1>Title</h1>
<p>
Content
</p>
The final result will be
<head>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/@vimesh/ui"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/alpinejs" defer></script>
</head>
<body x-data>
Load into the external "div" tag:<br>
<div style="background-color: #888;">
<h1>Title</h1>
<p>
Content
</p>
</div>
Unwrap the external "div" tag:<br>
<h1>Title</h1>
<p>
Content
</p>
</body>
In Vimesh UI, please use x-shtml instead of Alpine.js original x-html, which has wrong behaviors in case of complex component lifecycle.
x-data
is very convenient to use. Its data is accessible to all descendant elements. There is no problems for simple static web page. When developping reusable components, x-data
is too open to store component own states. We do not want the properties to be modified occasionally just because of name confliction. $api
allows to define private properties and methods. $api
is only available to current component. At the same time, it inherets from x-data. That means if this.somePropOrMethod
does not exist in $api, it will check somePropOrMethod
from x-data. $api
has some predefined properties and methods:
Properties | Description |
---|---|
$meta | Get the meta info of current component, including type, namespace, prefix. |
$parent | Get the closest parent component element |
Methods | Description |
---|---|
$of('component type') | Find the $api of specific component type of its ancestors. If the component type is empty, it will return the $api of its closest parent component |
$closest(filter) | Find the closest ancestor component element according to the filter, which could be component type or a function |
$find(filter) | Find all descendant component element according to the filter, which could be component type or a function |
$findOne(filter) | It is similar to $find, but only return the first component element match the filter |
x-data
has two lifecycle hooks: init and destroy. $api
has equivalents:
x-data | $api |
---|---|
init() | onMounted() |
destroy() | onUnmounted() |
Once Vimesh UI is initialized, there is a global variable $vui
attached to window
.
Property/Method | Description |
---|---|
$vui.config | A config object of debug mode flag and importMap |
$vui._ | An utility object of some most used functions: isString , isArray , isFunction , isPlainObject , each , map , filter , extend |
$vui.getComponentMeta(element) | Get component type and namespace from html element |
$vui.isComponent(element) | Return true if an html element is a Vimesh UI component |
$vui.visitComponents(elContainer, callback) | Recursively visit all components inside an html container element with callback |
$vui.findChildComponents(elContainer, filter) | Find all child component inside an html container element with specific filter, which could be component type or a function |
$vui.getParentComponent(element) | Get the parent component of specific html element |
$vui.findClosestComponent(element, filter) | Find the closest ancestor component element according to the filter, which could be component type or a function |
$vui.$api(element) | Get $api of a component element |
$vui.$data(element) | Alias of Alpine.$data(element) |
$vui.setHtml(elContainer, html) | Load html into a container element. And Vimesh UI components in the html will be correctly initialized |
$vui.defer(callback) | Execute callback in next event loop. |
$vui.dom(html) | Load a plain html into dom with Vimesh UI components correctly initialized |
$vui.nextTick(callback) | Alias of Alpine.nextTick(callback) |
$vui.effect(callback) | Alias of Alpine.effect(callback) |
$vui.focus(element, option) | Try to make an html element focused |
$vui.scrollIntoView(element) | Try to scroll an html element into view |
Check mpa example
Check spa example
Vimesh Headless UI includes some useful components, like Listbox, Combobox, Menu, Dialog, Tabs, Switch etc. It is a good start point for you to develop your own UI library.