DOMBuilder

DOMBuilder takes some of the pain out of dynamically creating HTML content in JavaScript and supports generating multiple types of output from the same inputs.

Yes, there are a million builder libraries about. DOMBuilder's goals are to:

• Make it easier to write JavaScript components which can be shared between the frontend and backend - newforms is an example of such a component, which aims to share validation code between the two.
• Make it easier to switch from DOM Element output to HTML String output if performence becomes an issue, by providing mock DOM objects and event registration helpers when generating HTML from the exact same input.

Demos

• Fragile - uses DOMBuilder's template mode and its template inheritance to create a CRUD admin with templates which can also be rendered on the backend with Node.js.
• DOMBuilder.build() sandbox - play around with DOMBuilder.build(), with switchable DOM and HTML output modes.
• Reddit posts - uses JSONP to display a feed of posts from Reddit:
  • Element function Reddit posts - uses element functions to generate contents directly with the DOM output mode.
  • Templated Reddit posts - uses Template mode with the DOM output mode.
• Demo page - small examples of using the range of the DOMBuilder API

Install

Browsers

Compressed builds of DOMBuilder are available to suit various needs:

DOM and HTML

For creation of mixed content, with DOM Mode as the default output format.

DOM only

For creation of DOM Elements, with DOM Mode as the default output format.

HTML only

For creation of HTML Strings, with HTML Mode as the default output format.

Templates

For templating, with mixed output and DOM Mode as the default output format.

Dependencies

There are no required dependencies, but if jQuery (>= 1.4) is available, DOMBuilder will make use of it when creating DOM Elements and setting up their attributes and event handlers.

If not, DOMBuilder will fall back to using some less comprehensive workarounds for cross-browser DOM issues and use the traditional event registration model for compatibility.

Node.js

DOMBuilder can be installed as a Node.js module via npm. The Node.js build includes Template mode and has HTML mode as the default output format.

Install:

npm install DOMBuilder

Import:

var DOMBuilder = require('DOMBuilder')

Quick Guide

DOMBuilder provides a convenient, declarative API for generating HTML elements, via objects which contain functions named for the HTML element they create:

with(DOMBuilder.dom) {
  var article =
    DIV({'class': 'article'}
    , H2('Article title')
    , P('Paragraph one')
    , P('Paragraph two')
    )
}

Every element function also has a map function attached to it which allows you to easily generate content from a list of items:

var el = DOMBuilder.html
function shoppingList(items) {
  return el.OL(el.LI.map(items))
}

>>> shoppingList(['Cheese', 'Bread', 'Butter'])
<ol><li>Cheese</li><li>Bread</li><li>Butter</li></ol>

You can control map output by passing in a callback function:

function opinionatedShoppingList(items) {
  return el.OL(el.LI.map(items, function(item, attrs, loop) {
    if (item == 'Cheese') attrs['class'] = 'eww'
    if (item == 'Butter') return el.EM(item)
    return item
  }))
}

>>> opinionatedShoppingList(['Cheese', 'Bread', 'Butter'])
<ol><li class="eww">Cheese</li><li>Bread</li><li><em>Butter</em></li></ol>

If you want to use this API to go straight to a particular type of output, you can do so using the functions defined in DOMBuilder.dom and DOMBuilder.html, as demonstrated above.

If you want to be able to switch freely between output modes, or you won't know which kind of output you need until runtime, you can use the same API via DOMBuilder.elements, controlling what it outputs by setting the DOMBuilder.mode flag to 'dom' or 'html', or calling a function which generates content using DOMBuilder.withMode:

var el = DOMBuilder.elements
function shoutThing(thing) {
  return el.STRONG(thing)
}

>>> DOMBuilder.mode = 'html'
>>> shoutThing('Hello!').toString()
<strong>Hello!</strong>
>>> DOMBuilder.withMode('dom', shoutThing, 'Hey there!')
[object HTMLStrongElement]

This is useful for writing libraries which need to support outputting both DOM Elements and HTML Strings, or for unit-testing code which normally generates DOM Elements by flipping the mode in your tests to switch to HTML String output.

DOMBuilder also supports using its output modes with another common means of defining HTML in JavaScript code, using nested lists (representing elements and their contents) and objects (representing attributes), like so:

var article =
  ['div', {'class': 'article'}
  , ['h2', 'Article title']
  , ['p', 'Paragraph one']
  , ['p', 'Paragraph two']
  ]

You can generate output from one of these structures using DOMBuilder.build, specifying the output mode:

>>> DOMBuilder.build(article, 'html').toString()
<div class="article"><h2>Article title</h2><p>Paragraph one</p><p>Paragraph two</p></div>

>>> DOMBuilder.build(article, 'dom').toString()
[object HTMLDivElement]

You can also generate these kinds of structures using the element functions defined in DOMBuilder.array.

This is just a quick guide to what DOMBuilder can do - dive into the full documentation to find out about the rest of its features, such as:

• Registering event handlers.
• Making it more convenient to work with innerHTML and event handlers.
• Populating DocumentFragments with content in a single call.
• Being able to use fragments in HTML mode via mock DOM objects.
• HTML escaping in HTML mode.

Development

Version 2.1: DOMBuilder.template

DOMBuilder is a modular library, which supports adding new output modes and feature modes as plugins.

Version 2.1 will add Template mode to DOMBuilder and the templating API should be considered unstable until Version 2.2.

• Based on Django templates, including their powerful template inheritance.

• Templates are defined entirely in JavaScript code, still discovering the pros and cons of this as I go:

  Pros

  • Easier to create new template tags, as there's no parsing step.
  • You can spin template creation out into DSL-like functions, which is expressive and very flexible, using functions to build up sections using logically named functions which create template contents based on data structures, rather than copying and pasting chunks of annotated markup or trying to use includes.

  Cons

  • More unwieldy to edit than text-based templates, but manageable if you follow some layout guidelines.
  • More awkward to do things like optional attributes and arbitrary chunks of HTML, since HTML is defined at the element level using DOMBuilder's element functions.

In this live example, template inheritance is being used to minimise the effort required to create basic admin CRUD screens using Sacrum.

Version 2.0.1 released on August 6th, 2011

See News for DOMBuilder for what's new and backwards-incompatible changes since 1.4.*.

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2011, Jonathan Buchanan

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.