Why must text nodes be created explicitly? #1009

ghost · 2021-01-11T05:00:24Z

Hi there,

Thank you for all your thoughtful work and sharing it with the world. I'm inspired by the discipline and thoughtfulness put into your projects like superfine and hyperapp.

Having used some other hyperscript implementations with various degrees of convenience, I wonder why text nodes must be created explicitly using superfine. Couldn't it be inferred with a simple typeof check?

One reason I ask is I'd like to use something like developit/htm to generate hyperscript from tagged template literals. While hyperscript has its benefits, I find it more convenient and natural to work with html using strings in some cases, e.g. integrating with a third-party design system.

Thanks for the handy library and your insight!

zaceno · 2021-01-11T08:17:19Z

@hqproto
Like you said, it could be inferred with a typeof check. But hyperapp would have to process the entire vnode tree recursively looking for things that might be strings to turn in to text nodes. It's not a huge performance hit but still – considering the person authoring the view already knows, and can tell us explicitly what should be a text node, why waste those cycles?

Of course, not everyone prefers writing explicit hyperscript, but that's no problem! LIke you said it's a simple typeof check you can do in userland.

You can make your own h function that does that and whatever else is needed (collecting multiple children in to an array, flattening children) for JSX or htm. Just base it on hyperapp's original h and text functions, and bind your own h in htm's .bind(...) rather than hyperapp's and youre good.

By the way:

there is another issue with using hyperapp (and presumably superfine) with htm, and that is the fact that htm's caching conflicts with a performance optimization in hyperapp. Hyperapp expects you to give it new vnodes each time (because it mutates the ones you give it) which is not true with the default htm. You need to use the "mini" version of htm (which does not do any caching) to be safe.

As an alternative for Hyperapp you could look in to hyperlit.

(It probably works for superfine as well but it will import hyperapp so probably not what you want in that case)

zaceno · 2021-01-15T12:51:53Z

@hqproto if you would still like to use developit/htm (or JSX) for creating hyperapp views, I have published https://github.com/zaceno/hyperapp-jsx-pragma which exports a h function that works like the old, pre-v2.0.5 version did.

For use with htm, for example:

import {app} from 'https://unpkg.com/hyperapp'
import htm from 'https://unpkg.com/htm/mini/index.module.js' //need the mini version because it doesn't cache nodes
import h from 'https://unpkg.com/hyperapp-jsx-pragma'
const html = htm.bind(h)

app({
  init: {},
  view: () => html`
    <body>
      <h1>Hello</h1>
    </body>`,
  node: document.body
})

But again, I recommend using Hyperlit for hyperapps, rather than developit/htm. The primary reason I published hyperapp-jsx-pragma is – as evidenced by its name – JSX

jorgebucaran · 2021-01-27T16:52:23Z

Text nodes are not strings. "This is a string" and text("this is a text node"). It may seem plain, but it isn't from a type perspective. Text nodes and strings are different types. Because it's now up to you to specify text nodes we don't have to worry about it, which allowed us to simplify h quite a bit (we didn't always have a text function).

I'd also argue that using text makes your views more readable. Now you can detect where the text nodes are in a heartbeat and leave strings for what they are, the tag in h("h1"), attributes that expect a string like input({ type: "text" }), etc.

This change was also motivated by performance and size, since less code means fewer bytes and usually (but not always) faster execution. Whenever you use h you're just createVNode(tag, props, children).

Simple is beautiful! 💗

jorgebucaran transferred this issue from jorgebucaran/superfine Jan 11, 2021

jorgebucaran closed this as completed Jan 27, 2021

jorgebucaran added the meta News and communication label Jan 27, 2021

jorgebucaran mentioned this issue Feb 14, 2021

Support non ES Module bundle in NPM #1030

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jorgebucaran pinned this issue Apr 3, 2021

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Why must text nodes be created explicitly? #1009

Why must text nodes be created explicitly? #1009

ghost commented Jan 11, 2021

zaceno commented Jan 11, 2021 •

edited

zaceno commented Jan 15, 2021 •

edited

jorgebucaran commented Jan 27, 2021

Why must text nodes be created explicitly? #1009

Why must text nodes be created explicitly? #1009

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ghost commented Jan 11, 2021

zaceno commented Jan 11, 2021 • edited

zaceno commented Jan 15, 2021 • edited

jorgebucaran commented Jan 27, 2021

zaceno commented Jan 11, 2021 •

edited

zaceno commented Jan 15, 2021 •

edited