$mol

Reactive micro-modular UI framework. Very simple, but very powerful!

Contents

Features

Reviews

$mol — лучшее средство от геморроя - Quick introduction to $mol
$mol: реактивный микромодульный фреймворк - First introduction to $mol
$mol: 4 года спустя - State of $mol after 4 years

Quick start

Video of this process

Create MAM project

The easiest way is to checkout this preconfigured MAM repository and start a dev server:

git clone https://github.com/hyoo-ru/mam.git ./mam && cd mam
npm install && npm start

Or simply use .

Setup your editor

Use MAM directory as root of your project in editor
Install VScode intellisense plugin for *.view.tree files
Install plugin for *.tree files
Install .editorconfig plugin or use these preferences: TABs for indents, LF for line endings.

Create your application component

The following example uses the namespace "my" and the application name "hello", but you can use your own namespace and application name.

Let's create a component that allows you to enter your name and display greeting text: "Hello, " + your name.

You need to create next files:

./my/hello/index.html - Web entry point
./my/hello/hello.view.tree - Declarative component description
./my/hello/hello.view.ts - Behaviour/User interface logic
./my/hello/hello.test.ts - Tests
./my/hello/hello.view.css - Styles

Add web entry point at ./my/hello/index.html:

<!doctype html> <!-- Disable quirks mode -->
<html mol_view_root> <!-- Reset root styles -->
	<head>
		<meta charset="utf-8" /> <!-- Force utf-8 encoding -->
		<meta
			name="viewport"
			content="width=device-width, height=device-height, initial-scale=1"
		/> <!-- Disable mobile browser auto zoom, $mol is adaptive -->
		<meta name="mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes"> <!-- Fullscreen support -->
		<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes">
	</head>
	<body mol_view_root> <!-- Reset root styles -->
		<div mol_view_root="$my_hello"></div> <!-- Autobind component to element on load -->
		<script src="web.js"></script> <!-- Load autogenerated js bundle -->
	</body>
</html>

Your application will be served at http://localhost:9080/my/hello/. Open it. You should refresh page to view your changes.

Add declarative component description at ./my/hello/hello.view.tree with string input field and greeting message:

$my_hello $mol_view
	sub /
		<= Name $mol_string
			hint \Name
			value? <=> name? \
		<= message \

Add your behaviour at ./my/hello/hello.view.ts by extending generated class:

namespace $.$$ {
	export class $my_hello extends $.$my_hello {
		
		message() {
			let name = this.name()
			return name && `Hello, ${name}!`
		}
		
	}
}

Add tests for your behaviour at ./my/hello/hello.test.ts

namespace $.$$ {

	$mol_test({

		'Generating greeting message'() {

			const app = new $my_hello
			$mol_assert_equal( app.message() , '' )
			
			app.name( 'Jin' )
			$mol_assert_equal( app.message() , 'Hello, Jin!' )

		}

	})

}

Add styles at ./my/hello/hello.view.css:

/* Styling BEM-block by autogenerated attribute */
[my_hello] {
	display: flex;
	flex-direction: column;
	align-items: center;
	font: 1.5rem/1 sans-serif;
	box-shadow: 0 0 0 1px var(--mol_theme_line);
	flex: 1 1 auto;
	align-self: stretch;
	margin: 0;
}

/* Styling BEM-element by autogenerated attribute */
[my_hello_name] {
	flex-grow: 0;
	margin: 1rem;
	width: 14rem;
}

That is all!

Tutorials

Rationale

Zero configuration

Instead of ensuring configurability by any means, $mol concentrates on everything working good directly out of the box and does not bother $mol's developer by a typical configuration process. (Nevertheless, this doesn't exclude setup for your needs if required)

For example if you download base MAM-project you'll get this:

Building of JS and CSS bundles for different platforms. A bundle can be built for any module. This bundle would contain sources of that module and sources of all other modules on which that module depends on. There also would not be any redundant modules in the bundle.

Here is a full set of supported bundles:

-/web.js - JS for browser
-/web.d.ts - TypeScript definitions
-/web.test.js - JS with tests for a browser
-/web.deps.json - map of dependencies modules for browser
-/web.locale=en.json - strings pulled from *.view.tree and *.locale=en.json sources
-/node.js - JS for NodeJS
-/node.test.js - JS with tests for NodeJS
-/node.deps.json - a map of dependencies modules for NodeJS

Support of Source Maps. Sources are compiled and integrated into maps, they are fully self-sufficient.

Development server, which compiles bundles as needed. For example, when http://localhost:9080/hyoo/todomvc/-/web.js is requested, the js bundle is built from hyoo/todomvc for web environment. Rebuilding occurs only if any source files are changed.

Transpilling TypeScript into JS. In TS configuration enabled support decorators and disabled implicit any type, to prevent missing typing by change.

Watching dependencies by fact of using and automatic inclusion of the needed modules on further bundling. You don't need to write include and require. All you need is to refer instance by full name like $mol_state_arg and $mol.state.arg (depending on its definition) in *.ts, *.view.ts, *.view.tree and *.jam.js files. Dependencies in CSS files are looked for by entries like [mol_check_checked] , [mol_check_checked= and .mol_check_checked.

Lego components

$mol uses the component approach to building interfaces, however every component is self-sufficient and can be used as a self-sufficient application. Small components are aggregated inside larger components etc.

Unlike another frameworks, $mol does not isolate the internals of its components. Vice versa, a comfortable mechanism is provided for developers to configure them, the creator of the component doesn't have to do any additional actions.

For example, to set the list of sub components you need to redefine sub property in view.tree

Confirm_delete $mol_row sub /
	<= Yes $mol_button_minor title \Yes
	<= No $mol_button_major title \No

Or the same code in TypeScript would be:

@ $mol_mem
Confirm_delete() {
	return $mol_row.make({
		sub : ()=> [ this.Yes() , this.No() ] ,
	})
}

In both variants the compiler would verify the existence of the property and correspondence of the signature. Normally you don't need to work with fields of the object directly, all definable properties are public and can be safely overloaded.

Details about viewers and view.tree language: $mol_view.

Laziness

$mol_view implements lazy rendering. $mol_scroll watches scroll position and suggests the view height to embedded components. $mol_list knows the view height and minimal sizes of the embedded components, it excludes components definitely outside viewport from rendering. And all other components report their minimal size through minimal_height property.

$my_icon $mol_view
	minimal_height 16

As the result opening of any window occurs instantly. It's independent from output data size. And since data would not be rendered, any requests would not be proceeded. This allows us to download them partly, when they are needed. Such a feature is possible due to reactive architecture, that penetrates through all layers of the application.

Reactivity

Unlike control-flow architectures, $mol implements the data-flow architecture. All applications are defined as a set of classes having properties. Every property is defined as some function from another property (and properties of another classes too). Properties, which were called while processing a function are saved as dependencies of current property. When their values change, all dependent properties would be invalidated cascading. Calling a non relevant property would lead to its pre-actualization.

In this way the whole application at the execution stage represents a huge tree of dependencies, with a special property at the root of the tree, which in case of invalidation would actualize itself automatically. And as any property always knows, whether something depends on it or not, then it is given a simple and reliable mechanism of controlling lifecycle of objects - they are created when dependence appears and are destroyed when nothing depends on them. This solves two fundamental problems: resources leaks and cache invalidation.

Besides, the reactive architecture allows us to abstract code elegantly from asynchronous operations. If the function can't return value at the moment, it can throw Promise and is marked as part of the tree as "waiting of results". When result is retrieved, it can be inserted into property directly and an application would be reconstructed for the new state.

namespace $ {
	export class $my_greeter {
		
		@ $mol_mem
		greeting() {
			const user_name = $mol_fetch.json( 'https://example.org/profile/name' )
			return `Hello, ${ user_name }!`
		}
		
	}
}

Details: $mol_wire.

Debugging

$mol pays special attention to debugging possibilities and research of how its code works.

A human friendly id is automatically formed for every DOM-element, e.g. $hyoo_todomvc.root(0).taskRow(0).titler(), which is a valid javascript code, that could be executed in a console, returning a link to the component, which the DOM-element corresponds to. Unfolding the content of the component you'd see names and values for its fields like:

$hyoo_todomvc
    dom_node() : div#$hyoo_todomvc.root(0)
    task(1474385802391) : Object
    task(1474386443175) : Object
    taskRow(0) : $hyoo_todomvc_task_rowRow
    taskRow(1) : $hyoo_todomvc_task_rowRow
    taskrows() : Array[2]

The name of the field corresponds to calling the property, the content of the field would be available through. And thanks to naming classes and functions by underscoring, you always know which class instance you're looking at and can briefly find it in the code by searching the substring.

Modules

Flow

$mol_fiber - Suspendable tasks
$mol_atom2 - Reactive container
$mol_log2 - Logging
$mol_import - Dynamic sources import
$mol_after - Scheduled callbacks with unified api
$mol_fail - Throws all exceptions in one place to increase debug experience

Object model

$mol_wire - Reactivity system
$mol_object - Components base class

Lifecycle

$mol_ambient - Makes derived context
$mol_owning - Owning relation between objects

Functions

$mol_const - Const value returning function
$mol_func_name - Name of function
$mol_func_sandbox - Sandbox for safe code evaluation

Collections

$mol_range2 - Lazy array
$mol_maybe - Maybe monad
$mol_conform - Object tree reconciler
$mol_dict - Useful native Map extension
$mol_array_chunks - Splits array by different chunks
$mol_array_trim - Shortens array without memory reallocation

State modules

$mol_state_arg - Arguments state (location/argv)
$mol_state_local - Persistent local state (localStorage)
$mol_state_session - Session temporary state (sessionStorage)
$mol_state_history - Browser history bound state
$mol_state_stack - State of current stack of execution
$mol_state_time - Reactive current time stamp

Simple components

$mol_view - Reactive view model base class with lazy error-proof renderer
$mol_ghost - Node-less wrapper for another view
$mol_filler - Lorem ipsum
$mol_svg - SVG base components
$mol_status - Prints error status of some property
$mol_speck - Attention speck

Simple controls

$mol_link - Navigation link
$mol_button - Button
$mol_check - Check box
$mol_switch - Radio buttons
$mol_select - Select with search and lazy rendering support
$mol_string - One string input control
$mol_textarea - Multiple line input control
$mol_search - Search string with suggests support
$mol_number - One number input control
$mol_code - Bar code scanner
$mol_portion - Portion visualizer

Layout components

$mol_scroll - Scroll pane with position saving
$mol_tiler - Items in row with balanced wrapping
$mol_row - Items in row with wrapping and padding between
$mol_bar - Group of controls as own control
$mol_list - Vertical list of rows
$mol_labeler - Labeled content
$mol_section - Section with header
$mol_book - Horizontal stack of pages
$mol_page - Page with header, body and footer
$mol_deck - Deck of panels with tab bar
$mol_card - Card with content

Plugin components

$mol_nav - Keyboard navigation
$mol_touch - Touch/pointer gestures
$mol_speech - Speech recognition and synthesis
$mol_hotkey - Keyboard shortcuts

Complex components

$mol_form - Forms with validators
$mol_attach - Preview list and attach button
$mol_cost - Prints currency values
$mol_message - User message

Charts

$mol_chart - Plot pane with legend
$mol_chart_legend - Simple legend for charts
$mol_plot_pane - Pane for multiple graphs
$mol_plot_graph - Plot graph base class
$mol_plot_bar - Bar graph
$mol_plot_line - Linear graph
$mol_plot_dot - Dots graph
$mol_plot_fill - Filling graph
$mol_plot_group - Group of graph as single graph
$mol_plot_ruler_vert - Vertical ruler
$mol_plot_ruler_hor - Horizontal ruler
$mol_plot_mark_hor - Horizontal markers

Data formats

$mol_tree2 - Tree format (view.tree language described at $mol_view)
$mol_base64 - Base64 encode/decode
$mol_leb128 - LEB128 encode/decode

Math

$mol_graph - Graph algorithms
$mol_unit - Typed number value
$mol_merge_dict - Merge two dictionaries to new one

Resources

$mol_icon - CSS styled material design icons
$mol_theme - Theming
$mol_gap - Paddings, margins etc
$mol_style - CSS-in-TS

Testing

$mol_test - Unit testing
$mol_stub - Stub data generators
$mol_assert - Assertion functions

API

$mol_window - Reactive view port configuration
$mol_fetch - Reactive Fetch API
$mol_webdav - Reactive WebDAV client
$mol_file - Isomorphic reactive file system wrapper
$mol_run - Synchronous execute of system command
$mol_cordova - Apache Cordova API

Time

$mol_time_moment - Time moment representation with iso8601 support
$mol_time_duration - Time duration representation with iso8601 support
$mol_time_interval - Time interval representation with iso8601 support
$mol_state_time - Reactive current time stamp
$mol_date - Date picker
$mol_calendar - Days of month as table

Maps

$mol_map_yandex - Yandex Maps

WebAssemply

$mol_wasm - WASM runner
$mol_leb128 - LEB128 encode/decode
$mol_tree2_wasm - wasm.tree representation

Web Services

$mol_github - GitHub API
$mol_chat - GitHub based comments everywhere

Building

$mol_build - MAM builder
$mol_build_server - MAM developer server

Usage from NPM ecosystem

You can manually build any $mol module as standalone lib:

git clone https://github.com/hyoo-ru/mam.git ./mam
cd mam
npm install
npm start path/to/module
cp path/to/module/-/* your/build/directory

Some libs are already published to NPM:

$mol_data - Static typed DTO with strict runtime validation and user friendly error messages.
$mol_strict - Makes JS runtime more strict.
$mol_time - Proper date/time/duration/interval arithmetic.
$mol_type - TypeScript meta types for complex logic.
$mol_regexp - Regular Expressions builder.
$mol_crypto - Efficient cryptographic algorithms.
$mol_db - Static typed IndexedDB wrapper with auto migrations.
$hyoo_crowd - Conflict-free Reinterpretable Ordered Washed Data.
$mol_plot - Fastest plot lib for vector graphics.

All of them are very small, powerful and fastest. Use it for your pleasure.

Contributors

This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute.

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