README

snabbdom-virtualize

Library for turning strings and DOM nodes into virtual DOM nodes compatible with Snabbdom.

API

`virtualize(nodes, options)`

nodes: Element|String - Either a DOM Element or a string of HTML to turn into a set of virtual DOM nodes.
options: Object - A hash of options to pass into the virtualize call. Available options are currently:
- context: Document - An alternative DOM document to use (default is window.document).
- hooks: Object - An object specifying hooks to call during the virtualization process. See the hooks section below.

Usage

Add it to your application with

npm install --save snabbdom-virtualize

Require/import it.

// ES6
import virtualize from 'snabbdom-virtualize';

// Require.
let virtualize = require('snabbdom-virtualize').default;

Pass it a set of DOM nodes or a string representing DOM nodes with one root node.

// Actual DOM nodes
let topNode = document.createElement('div');
let textNode = document.createTextNode('Click ');
let linkNode = document.createElement('a');
linkNode.setAttribute('href', 'http://example.com');
linkNode.textContent = 'here';
topNode.appendChild(textNode);
topNode.appendChild(linkNode);
let vnode = virtualize(topNode);


// String
let vnode = virtualize('<div>Click <a href="http://example.com">here</a></div>');

Specifying a different document

You can specify a different DOM document (other than the default window.document in a browser) by passing a context option into your calls to virtualize. This will allow for usage in a server-side setting, where there is no browser. One option is to use jsdom to create a DOM document that can be used:

const virtualize = require('snabbdom-virtualize').default;
const jsdom = require('jsdom').jsdom;
virtualizeString('<div>Click <a href="http://example.com">here</a></div>', {
  context: jsdom('<html></html>')
});

Using modules à la carte

If you'd prefer to import just the function for virtualizing DOM nodes or just the function for virtualizing HTML strings, you're in luck. Just import snabbdom-virtualize/nodes or snabbdom-virtualize/strings and use in the same way:

// DOM nodes.
import virtualize from 'snabbdom-virtualize/nodes';

let topNode = document.createElement('div');
let textNode = document.createTextNode('Click ');
let linkNode = document.createElement('a');
linkNode.setAttribute('href', 'http://example.com');
linkNode.textContent = 'here';
topNode.appendChild(textNode);
topNode.appendChild(linkNode);
let vnode = virtualize(topNode);


// HTML strings.
import virtualize from 'snabbdom-virtualize/strings';

let vnode = virtualize('<div>Click <a href="http://example.com">here</a></div>');

Hooks

You can register a create hook with any of the virtualize functions. This will be called once for each vnode that was created. It's called after the virtualization process is completed. The function receives one argument - the VNode that was created.

// The function passed as the 'create' hook is called 3 times: once for the
// <div>, once for the <span> and once for the text node inside the <span>.
virtualize("<div><span>Hi!</span></div>", {
    hooks: {
        create: function(vnode) { ... }
    }
});

Hooks allow you to perform some operations on your VNodes after virtualization but before patching with snabbdom.

Project setup

Written in ES6, compiled using Babel. To get started:

npm install
npm run build

This will output compiled files in the lib directory.

Tests

Tests can be run with npm test.

Usage no npm install needed!