React.hiccup

React 0% JSX, 100% hiccup

Dig React but JSX feels a bit weird? React.hiccup to the rescue!

React.hiccup is a complete replacement for JSX written in sweet.js.

React.hiccup uses a very clean, minimalistic notation - no HTML tags and no curly braces in HTML elements.

Syntax

React.hiccup syntax is heavily inspired by hiccup, a popular Clojure HTML rendering library.

In short, the syntax for a React.hiccup element is

hiccup [tag#id.class1.class2 {property1: value1, property2: value2} child1 child2 ...]

e.g.

hiccup [div#foo.bar.baz {some: "property", another: this.props.anothervalue} 
         [p "A child element"] "Child text"]

where the id, classes, property object and children are all optional. The className can be also specified among the properties, in this case it will be merged with the class names given after the tag.

A child can be a string, a number or a multiline string (use the backtick)

hiccup [div#foo.bar.baz `This
is a
  multiline 
  comment`]

A child can also be a JavaScript variable identifier

var comment = "Some comment";
hiccup [div#foo.bar.baz "The comment is: " comment]

but in case it is anything more complex, e.g. an expression, it needs to be surrounded by parentheses

hiccup [div#foo.bar.baz "The comment is: " (this.state.comment)]

or

var one_or_two = 1;
var comment1 = "First comment";
var comment2 = "Second comment";
hiccup [div#foo.bar.baz "The comment is: " (one_or_two == 1 ? comment1 : comment2 )]

Note that this is not required in the property object

var one_or_two = 1;
var comment1 = "First comment";
var comment2 = "Second comment";
hiccup [div#foo.bar.baz {someprop: 1 > 0 ? true : false, someother: "other" + "prop" } "A child"]

Shorthand react class declaration

React.hiccup also comes with an optional macro rclass for declaring a React class

rclass FooBar = {
  render: function() { ... }
}

expands to (omitting the sweet.js gensym)

var FooBar = React.createClass({
  render: function() { ... }
});

while

rclass window.FooBar = {
  render: function() { ... }
}

expands to

window.FooBar = React.createClass({
  render: function() { ... }
});

Get it

First install sweet.js if you don't have it already

$ npm install -g sweet.js

If you do have it, update it (0.4.0 is required)

$ npm update -g sweet.js

Then

$ npm install react.hiccup

All set. Now to compile a React.hiccup js file into a plain js file do

$ sjs -m react.hiccup/macros -o foo_build.js foo.js

To watch the file and have it automatically compiled whenever the file changes on disk

$ sjs -m react.hiccup/macros -o foo_build.js -w foo.js

Examples

React frontpage examples

Here's how React frontpage examples can be written using React.hiccup.

React tutorial

For something more involved you can take a look at the React tutorial.

Here's the code in JSX, and here's the same code in React.hiccup.

License

MIT license http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php/

Copyright (C) 2014 Luca Antiga http://lantiga.github.io