Ripple.js – A tiny foundation for building reactive views

http://ripplejs.github.io/

by anthonyshort • 12 years ago

118 26 12 years ago

ripplejs.github.io

A tiny foundation for building reactive views with plugins. It aims to have a similar API to Reactive, but allow composition of views, like React.

The major difference with other view libraries is that there are no globals used at all in ripple. Each view has it's own set of bindings and plugins. This makes composition of views really easy.

Views that are created with ripple can be composed within other views and reused. Data flows in a single direction and is kept in sync automatically.

j_s• 12 years ago

Props for introductory comparison with similar libraries and up-front info on supported browsers (IE9+).

ncrit• 12 years ago

Yep, well, only supporting IE9+ unfortunately makes this unusable for production websites at this point, as a huge portion of users is shut out.

prezjordan• 12 years ago

First metalsmith and now this - I love your APIs. Definitely using it in a project sometime soon. I assume it doesn't have the same virtual DOM magic that React has?

anthonyshort3• 12 years ago

Nope, no virtual DOM. I like that concept, but I wanted to keep it simple. I'd like to make a virtual DOM plugin but it's a non-trivial task.

It still batches all changes using requestAnimationFrame and it'll support Object.observe when that's ready.

gingersnap• 12 years ago

Every time something comes from segment.io my interest level goes up. This looks worthy of checking out too.

elsigh• 12 years ago

Scumbag hamburger menu - links to github instead of showing / hiding unnecessary drawer ;0

staticshock• 12 years ago

The hamburger menu icon is definitely ill-fitting, since the primary association for that icon (and that placement) it has is "menus" and not "documentation".

Kiro• 12 years ago

What are you talking about?

dreamdu5t• 12 years ago

What about nesting views? And communication between views?

Web components seem much more promising for the very reason that we shouldn't have to reinvent an event bus when we already have an evented DOM.

anthonyshort3• 12 years ago

https://github.com/ripplejs/ripple/tree/master/docs/composin...

Yep, you can nest views in a similar way to React. It's not exactly the same, but it's similar. Data is kept in sync and components are re-usable.

Communication between views is either through events, passing in callbacks, the dispatch plugin (uses custom DOM events and bubbling like Flight). There are a few ways to do it depending on the problem. Views have references to their children and the owner too.

cettox2• 12 years ago

Its ripple.min.js is 30kb. Not so tiny is it?

anthonyshort3• 12 years ago

gzips down to 8kb though, and that's the standalone version. Using it with component it will usually share dependencies with other components.

cettox2• 12 years ago

Sorry, I can confirm it is 8kb gzipped, and it is acceptable. I may seemed over reacting to this because I am a developer who spent last month optimizing web pages by reducing js size :)

columbus• 12 years ago

Looks really intriguing. The other libraries are so full-featured that they're confusing to use. I'll have to play with this.

One minor point: wish it were called something other than Ripple. There's already Ripple for p2p financial transactions.

johnzabroski3• 12 years ago

What other libraries? J/w.

skybrian• 12 years ago

Am I missing something, or is the example in the README installing plugins uselessly?

  .use(events)
  .use(each)
  .use(dispatch);

It would be less confusing to defer that to examples that actually use these plugins.

amirouche2• 12 years ago

Too bad there is no "complex" example at hand, for instance: how it would batch updates for data pushed by the server, while allowing for +fav and +subscriptions without leaving the door open for an absurd amount of open connections where responsiveness to direct user input is always the highest priority which must stay true if animations/transitions are happening.

edit: typofix + animation/transition handling

johnzabroski3• 12 years ago

Thanks for the objection.

I have never heard of Reactive, React, or Ripple.

I don't understand how this is better than Knockout, which has been around since 2006?

To summarize your objection, this library hardwires events to the UI. I don't understand how that allows for composition, and even then, the composition is happening at the view level, rather than the model level, which seems like a mistake???

Sorry if I am naive or coming off as rude. I just don't get it.

johnzabroski3• 12 years ago

Let me rephrase my objection once more.

In graphics programming, it is customary to have a Scene Graph which is a Model that represents the scene you need to Render.

In Desktop/Web programming for business apps, this design pattern/abstraction step seems completely absent, and developers seem to continuously mush together view and model.

What "composition" can't be achieved simply by having a Knockout Virtual Element, or Template Selector driven by a ViewModel property?

xatxat• 12 years ago

This could be a really nice replacement of Backbone.View.

tremols• 12 years ago

Clear and concise documentation explaining everything on a couple pages, which impresses me more than flashy interactive tutorials. Simple architecture that won't create an unmanageable black-magic mess on the global background and crash with other libraries, even the source code looks so neat and clean. I will be using this soon!.

andrewflnr• 12 years ago

How well does it handle css properties like size and position being templated?

hasenj• 12 years ago

Is it just me or is this just a poor re-implemntation of half of knockout.js?

Ripple.js – A tiny foundation for building reactive views

Related Stories