Ninja Keys

Keyboard shortcut interface for your website that works with Vanilla JS, Vue, and React.

Demo

https://ninja-keys-demo.vercel.app/

Motivation

A lot of applications support a common pattern where the user hits ⌘+k (or ctrl+k) and a search UI dialog appears. I've recently seen this in Notion, Slack, Linear, Vercel and Algolia, but I'm sure there are plenty more. Apple Spotlight, Alfred and the Raycast app also have a similar pattern, but with different shortcuts. There are already some libraries built for this, but they are too framework specific, like Laravel only or React only Nevertheless, mine is not a silver bullet and if you need more framework integration, check them out too.

I needed a keyboard interface for navigation with static websites without any frameworks. At the same time, I have a few Vue projects where something like this could be useful, so I decided to give it a try for Web Components and Lit Element.

Integrations

Features

Keyboard navigation
Light and dark theme built in
Built-in icon support from Material font and custom svg icons
Nested menu - a tree or flat data structure can be used
Auto register your shortcuts
Root search - for example, if you search "Dark," it will find it within the "Theme" submenu
CSS variable to customize the view
Customizable hotkeys to open/close etc. Choose what best fits your website.

Why the "Ninja" name?

Because it appears from nowhere and executes any actions quickly... Or because it allows your users to become keyboard ninjas 🙃

Install from NPM

npm i ninja-keys

Import if you are using webpack, rollup, vite or other build system.

import 'ninja-keys';

Install from CDN

Mostly for usage in HTML/JS without a build system.

<script type="module" src="https://unpkg.com/ninja-keys?module"></script>

or inside your module scripts

<script type="module">
  import {NinjaKeys} from 'https://unpkg.com/ninja-keys?module';
</script>

Usage

Add the tag to your HTML.

<ninja-keys> </ninja-keys>

<script>
  const ninja = document.querySelector('ninja-keys');
  ninja.data = [
    {
      id: 'Projects',
      title: 'Open Projects',
      hotkey: 'ctrl+N',
      icon: 'apps',
      section: 'Projects',
      handler: () => {
        // it's auto register above hotkey with this handler
        alert('Your logic to handle');
      },
    },
    {
      id: 'Theme',
      title: 'Change theme...',
      icon: 'desktop_windows',
      children: ['Light Theme', 'Dark Theme', 'System Theme'],
      hotkey: 'ctrl+T',
      handler: () => {
        // open menu if closed. Because you can open directly that menu from it's hotkey
        ninja.open({ parent: 'Theme' });
        // if menu opened that prevent it from closing on select that action, no need if you don't have child actions
        return {keepOpen: true};
      },
    },
    {
      id: 'Light Theme',
      title: 'Change theme to Light',
      icon: 'light_mode',
      parent: 'Theme',
      handler: () => {
        // simple handler
        document.documentElement.classList.remove('dark');
      },
    },
    {
      id: 'Dark Theme',
      title: 'Change theme to Dark',
      icon: 'dark_mode',
      parent: 'Theme',
      handler: () => {
        // simple handler
        document.documentElement.classList.add('dark');
      },
    },
  ];
</script>

Library using flat data structure inside, as in the example above. But you can also use a tree structure as below:

{
  id: 'Theme',
  children: [
    { id: 'light' title: 'light_mode', },
    { id: 'System Theme',
      children: [
        { title: 'Sub item 1' },
        { title: 'Sub item 2' }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Attributes

Field	Default	Description
placeholder	Type a command or search...	Placeholder for search
disableHotkeys	false	If attribute exist will register all hotkey for all actions
hideBreadcrumbs	false	Hide breadcrumbs on header if true
openHotkey	cmd+k,ctrl+k	Open or close shortcut
navigationUpHotkey	up,shift+tab	Navigation up shortcuts
navigationDownHotkey	down,tab	Navigation down shortcuts
closeHotkey	esc	Close shortcut
goBackHotkey	backspace	Go back on one level if has parent menu
selectHotkey	enter	Select action and execute handler or open submenu
hotKeysJoinedView	false	If exist/true will display hotkeys inside one element
noAutoLoadMdIcons	false	If exist it disable load material icons font on connect

Example

<ninja-keys placeholder="Must app is awesome" openHotkey="cmd+l" hideBreadcrumbs></ninja-keys>

Data

Array of INinjaAction - interface properties below

Name	Type	Description
id	string	Unique id/text. Will be displayed as breadcrumb in multimenu
title	string	Title of action
hotkey	string(optional)	Shortcut to display and register
handler	Function(optional)	Function to execute on select
mdIcon	string(optional)	Material Design font icon name
icon	string(optional)	Html to render as custom icon
parent	string(optional)	If using flat structure use id of actions to make a multilevel menu
keywords	string(optional)	Keywords to use for search
children	Array(optional)	If using flat structure then ids of child menu actions. Not required on tree structure
section	string(optional)	Section text. Like a header will be group with other same sections

Methods

Name	Arg	Description
`open`	{ parent?: string }	Open menu with parent, if null then open root menu
`close`		Close menu
`setParent`	parent?: string	Navigate to parent menu

Example

const ninja = document.querySelector('ninja-keys');
ninja.open() 
// or
ninja.open({ parent: 'Theme' })

Events

Component wide events

Name	Description	Payload
`change`	Emitted when on each change of search input	`{ detail: { search: string, actions: Array<NinjaAction> } }`
`selected`	Emitted when on user selected action or on submit of input	`{ detail: { search: string, action: NinjaAction or undefined }}`

Both handler of action and component event selected emitted when user submit form or select item.

But event selected can be used to handle edge cases, so it's not recommended to write each action logic here. It’s better to use the action handler property.

For example, if a user enters a search query and there is an empty list, listening to this event you can handle that.

ninja.addEventListener('change', (event) => {
  console.log('ninja on change', event.detail);
  // detail = {search: 'your search query', actions: Array<NinjaAction>}
})
ninja.addEventListener('selected', (event) => {
  console.log('ninja on selected', event.detail);
  // detail = {search: 'your search query', action: NinjaAction | undefined }
  if (event.detail.action){
  // perform API search for example
  }
   
})

Themes

Component supports a dark theme out-of-box. You just need to add a class.

<ninja-keys class="dark"></ninja-keys>

If you need more style control, use any of the CSS variables below.

CSS variables

Name	Default
--ninja-width	640px;
--ninja-backdrop-filter	none;
--ninja-overflow-background	rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.5);
--ninja-text-color	rgb(60, 65, 73);
--ninja-font-size	16px;
--ninja-top	20%;
--ninja-key-border-radius	0.25em
--ninja-accent-color	rgb(110, 94, 210);
--ninja-secondary-background-color	rgb(239, 241, 244);
--ninja-secondary-text-color	rgb(107, 111, 118);
--ninja-selected-background	rgb(248, 249, 251);
--ninja-icon-color	var(--ninja-secondary-text-color);
--ninja-icon-size	1.2em;
--ninja-separate-border	1px solid var(--ninja-secondary-background-color);
--ninja-modal-background	#fff;
--ninja-modal-shadow	rgb(0 0 0 / 50%) 0px 16px 70px;
--ninja-actions-height	300px;
--ninja-group-text-color	rgb(144, 149, 157);
--ninja-footer-background	rgba(242, 242, 242, 0.4);
--ninja-placeholder-color	#8e8e8e
--ninja-z-index	1

Example

ninja-keys {
  --ninja-width: 400px;
}

CSS Shadow Parts

Allowing you to style specific elements from your style. Because styles are encapsulated by Shadow DOM, it will be annoying to create css variables for all properties. That's why you can use ::part to make a custom look for the component. It's supported by all modern browsers

Name	Description
actions-list	Element that wraps all child elements.
ninja-action	Single action
ninja-selected	Selected action
ninja-input	Input element
ninja-input-wrapper	Wrapper element around div, useful for advanced styles

Example style using parts

ninja-keys::part(actions-list) {
  padding: 8px;
}
ninja-keys::part(ninja-action) {
  border-radius: 8px;
  border-left: none;
}

ninja-keys::part(ninja-selected) {
  background: rgba(51, 51, 51, 0.1);
}


ninja-keys::part(ninja-input) {
  color: #14b8a6;
}

ninja-keys::part(ninja-input)::placeholder {
  color: #f43f5e;
}

ninja-keys::part(ninja-input-wrapper) {
  background: rgba(244, 63, 93, 0.3);
}

Icons

By default, components use icons from https://fonts.google.com/icons

For example, you can just set mdIcon to light_mode to render a sun icon.

To add Material icons for your website, you need to add them to your HTML, for example

<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Material+Icons&display=block" rel="stylesheet">

If you want custom icons, you can use svg or img to insert it with an icon property for action with ninja-icon class. Example:

{
  title: 'Search projects...',
  icon: `<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" class="ninja-icon" fill="none" viewBox="0 0 24 24" stroke="currentColor">
    <path stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="2" d="M7 8h10M7 12h4m1 8l-4-4H5a2 2 0 01-2-2V6a2 2 0 012-2h14a2 2 0 012 2v8a2 2 0 01-2 2h-3l-4 4z" />
  </svg>`,
  section: 'Projects',
},

You can also change the width and font using CSS variables

ninja-keys {
  --ninja-icon-size: 1em;
}

Change or hide footer

<ninja-keys> 
  <div slot="footer">You can use a custom footer or empty div to hide it</div>
</ninja-keys>

Dev Server

npm run start

Linting

To lint the project run:

npm run lint

Formatting

Prettier is used for code formatting. It has been pre-configured according to the Lit's style.

License

Copyright (c) Sergei Sleptsov hey@sergei.ws

Licensed under the MIT license.