Introduction

mReact is a fork library of Mithril, which is a performant and compact client-side Javascript MVC framework and provides a templating engine with a virtual DOM diff implementation for performant rendering.

For people used to React(by facebook), Mithril may feels a little bit quirky. And sometimes, I just need a pure render engine with a virtual DOM diff implementation. React is great, but is too big in some cases.

Thereby, here is the "mReact", a small React-like library, thanks to Mithril.

• Only 8.6k by gzipped.
• Usage resembles React, include lifecycle methods, createComponent factory method(similar to createClass)
• Support MSX syntax(similar to JSX) by using MSX by Jonathan Buchanan
• Support Event Delegation(use 'ev' plus camel Case event name as attribute, and events donot bubble by default, call "ev.startPropagation" to bubble)
• Support Server Rendering, and dom will be reserved properly during client code execution.
• Support cascade rendering

I'm not trying to build a drop-in replacement for React, just mimic the taste. Parts of Mithril other than rendering are removed. So how to manage routing or model layer is all up to you.

Usage

installation:

$ npm install m-react

code:

    var m = require('m-react');
    var MyComponent = m.createComponent({
        render: function(props, state){
            return m('div', [
              m('input', {
                type: 'text',
                evChange: this.onChange
              }),
              m('p', {
                style: {
                  'backgroundColor': props.backgroundColor
                }
              }, state.date)
            ]);
        },
        getInitialState: function(){
            return {
                date: (new Date).toString()
            };
        },
        onChange: function(ev){
            console.log(ev.currentTarget);
            console.log(ev.originalEvent);
        },
        componentDidMount: function(){
            var self = this;
            this.timer = setInterval(function(){
                self.setState({
                    date: (new Date).toString()
                });
            },1000);
        },
        componentWillUnmount: function(){
            clearTimeout(this.timer);
        }

    });

    m.mount(document.body, m(MyComponent, { backgroundColor:"yellow" }));

on server:

    var renderToString = require('m-react/renderToString');
    var outputHTML = renderToString(m(MyComponent, {backgroundColor: 'yellow'}), 0);//add second param to enable dom reservation in browser, do not pass this parameter if only want to output pure html string
    ...

output html:

    <div data-mref="0">
        <input type="text" data-mref="0"/>
        <p style="background-color:yellow" data-mref="1">Wed May 27 2015 15:01:23 GMT+0800 (CST)</p>
    </div>

JS API

m.createComponent(options, mixins)

Return a component that is passed into m.render/m.mount as the first parameter.

defaultProps

Object The default values for the component's properites.

getInitialProps(props)

Function Invoked after component is initiated, and merged properties is passed in, and should return the final properties object of the component.

getInitialState(props)

Function Invoked after getInitialProps, prepare the initial value of the component's state object.

setState(state, isSilent)

Function Reset component's state object, passed in state object will be merge into current component state object. And if no second parameter is passed in, component will rerender itself. Otherwise, if isSilent is true, component will not rerender.

componentWillMount

Function Invoke before component's dom is first created yet not inserted into the dom tree.

componentDidMount(el)

Function Invoke after component's dom is inserted into the dom tree for the first time.

componentWillUpdate(el, oldProps, oldState)

Function Invoke before each time component applying the diff rendering.

componentDidUpdate(el, oldProps, oldState)

Function Invoke after applying the diff rendering.

compoenetWillDetached(el)

Function Invoke before component's dom is removed from the dom tree.

componentWillUnmount(e)

Funtion Invoke before component is unmounted.

shouldComponentUpdate(oldProps, oldState)

Function Invoke before rendering, check the return boolean to decide whether to perform the diff rendering.

m.mount(dom, vNode, forceRecreation)

Function Clear vNodes mounted onto the dom, remount vNode onto the dom, recreate dom if forceRecreation is true.

m.render(root, vNode, forceRecreation, force)

Function Perform diff rendering on the root dom, recreate dom if forceRecreation is true, render immediately if force is true. Examples

TodoMVC: https://github.com/ybybzj/m-react-todomvc

Performance

TodoMVC Perf Comparison: http://ybybzj.github.io/m-react-todomvc-perf/