backstitch! 🧵

To sew with overlapping stitches, to bind two pieces of fabric together.

backstitch allows you to wrap your React UI elements in a Web Components custom elements API, and use them in places where it's otherwise tricky to embed React — e.g. in Elm!

• API
  • backstitch.define
  • backstitch.props
  • backstitch.PROPS_ATTRIBUTE
• React example
• Elm example
• How it works (WIP)
• Limitations

API

backstitch.define

The backstitch.define function mimics the native customElements.define API:

backstitch.define("x-element", ReactComponent)

backstitch.props

backstitch.props serialises plain-old-javascript props to a JSON string under the correct data-props object key, so that they can be directly passed to a backstitch custom element.

With the right cocktail of polyfills, this can be used to check custom elements against their original tests, e.g.:

const container = render(
  React.createElement("x-element", backstitch.props(plainOldJavascriptProps))
)

backstitch.PROPS_ATTRIBUTE

The name of the props data-* attribute (i.e. "data-props").

React example

import * as backstitch from "backstitch"
import ReactButton from "./components/Button"

backstitch.define("x-button", ReactButton)

const ContrivedExample = props => (
  <x-button
    data-props=`{"size": "huge", "blink": ${props.isObnoxious}}`
    onClick={() => window.alert("Zap! Kapow!")}
  >
    Click Me!
  </x-button>
)

Elm example

import * as backstitch from "backstitch"
import ReactButton from "./components/Button"

backstitch.define("x-button", ReactButton)

const { Elm } = require("./App.elm")

Elm.Main.init({
  node: document.getElementById("root")
})

...

view : Model -> Html Msg
view model =
    let
        props =
            encode 0 <|
              object
                  [ ( "size", string "huge" )
                  , ( "blink" , bool model.isObnoxious )
                  ]
    in
    Html.node "x-button"
      [ attribute "data-props" props
      , onClick ZapKapow
      ]
      [ Html.text "Click Me!"
      ]

How it works (WIP)

On creation, the custom element creates a shadow DOM containing a single span element. It renders a bridging React component into this element, which hosts the wrapped component and supplies its props.

The custom element listens for changes on its data-props attribute. When it detects a change, it passes the attribute data to the bridge component, instructing it to update its state with the new data.

React then takes over and decides whether any of the wrapped components' props are affected by the new state in the bridge component. If so, this triggers a rerender of the wrapped component.

For more detail, see: ./packages/backstitch/src/custom-element.ts

Limitations

backstitch is only able to send props data which can be serialised to JSON. While in practice this covers many use cases, some React tricks such as passing event handlers or render functions as props will not work with custom elements.