tosijs-ui

ui.tosijs.net live demo | tosijs | discord | github | npm

Copyright ©2023-2025 Tonio Loewald

Upgrading from an older version? <tosi-code> changed editors in 1.7.0, and 1.3.0 renamed everything from xinjs-ui. Both are covered in Migrating from older versions — new projects can skip it.

the tosijs-ui library

A set of web-components created with tosijs, designed to augment what the browser gives you for free rather than replace it.

It works beautifully with other web-component libraries, such as shoelace.style.

Quick Start

Using npm and a bundler

Add tosijs-ui to your project, e.g.

npm add tosijs-ui

Then import the component elementCreator and create elements. A tosijs elementCreator is syntax sugar around document.createElement().

import { tosiTable } from 'tosijs-ui'

document.body.append(tosiTable())

Using the iife via cdn

The tosijs-ui iife build bundles tosijs, tosijs-ui, marked and — as of 1.7 — CodeMirror into a single minified javascript source file. You can access xinjs and xinjsui as globals which contain all the things exported by tosijs and tosijs-ui.

Size (1.7): ~385KB gzip, up from ~120KB in 1.6. bun build --format iife cannot code-split, so <tosi-code>'s lazy CodeMirror import is flattened into this bundle whether or not the page uses an editor. If you don't need <tosi-code>, use the ESM build (import 'tosijs-ui' via a bundler), where CodeMirror stays a separate lazy chunk and a page with no editor never downloads it.

<script src="https://ui.tosijs.net/iife.js"></script>
<button id="menu">Menu <tosi-icon icon="chevronDown"></tosi-icon></button>
<script>
  const { elements } = xinjs
  const { popMenu, icons } = xinjsui
  const { button } = elements

  const showMenu = (target) => {
    popMenu({
      target,
      menuItems: [
        {
          caption: 'Say hello',
          action() {
            alert('hello')
          }
        },
        null,
        {
          caption: 'Version',
          action() {
            alert(`tosijs ${xinjs.version}\ntosijs-ui ${xinjsui.version}`)
          }
        }
      ]
    })
  }

  document.body.append(
    button(
      {
        onClick(event) {
          showMenu(event.target)
        }
      },
      'Menu',
      icons.chevronDown()
    )
  )
</script>

The entire live documentation site is built with the iife bundle — every page is static HTML that loads iife.js and hydrates, so it doubles as a working iife example (view source on any page).

custom-elements

The simplest way to use these elements is to simply import the element and then either use HTML or the ElementCreator function exported.

E.g. to use the markdown viewer:

import { tosiMd } from 'tosijs-ui'
document.body.append(tosiMd('# hello world\nthis is a test'))

import { tosiMd } from 'tosijs-ui'

preview.append(
  tosiMd(`
## hello world
here is some markdown
`)
)

Assuming you import the module somewhere, the HTML will work as well.

<tosi-md>
## hello world
here is some markdown
</tosi-md>

The big difference with using the tosiMd() function is that the tosijs Component class will automatically pick a new tag if the expected tag is taken (e.g. by a previously defined custom-element from another library). tosiMd() will create an element of the correct type.

The other thing is that tosijs ElementCreator functions are convenient and composable, allowing you to build DOM elements with less code than pretty much any other option, including JSX, TSX, or HTML.

Philosophy

In general, tosijs strives to work with the browser rather than trying to replace it.

In a similar vein, tosijs-ui comprises a collection of web-components with the goal of augmenting what already works well, and the components are intended to be as similar as possible to things that you already use, such as <input> or <select> elements. E.g. where appropriate, the value of an element is its malleable state, and when this changes, the element emits a change event.

Similarly, the tosijs base Component class and the components in this collection strive to be as similar in operation as possible to DOM elements as makes sense. E.g. binary attributes work as expected. Adding the hidden attribute makes them disappear. If a component subclass has a value property then it will be rendered if the value changes (similarly it will be rendered if an initialized attribute is changed). Intrinsic properties of components will default to null rather than undefined.

Similarly, because web-components are highly interoperable, there's no reason to reinvent wheels. In particular, this library won't try to replace existing, excellent libraries such as shoelace.style or wrap perfectly functional HTML elements, like the venerable <input> or <form> elements that are already capable and accessible.

The goal here is to provide useful components and other utilities that add to what's built into HTML5 and CSS3 and to make custom-elements work as much as possible like drop-in replacements for an <input> or <textarea> (while mitigating the historical pathologies of things like <select> and <input type="radio">). E.g. the <tosi-select> does not suffer from a race-condition between having its value set and being given an <option> with the intended value and you can differentiate between the user picking a value (action) and the value changing (change).

Credits

tosijs-ui is being developed using bun. bun is crazy fast (based on Webkit's JS engine, vs. V8), does a lot of stuff natively, and runs TypeScript (with import and require) directly.

Logo animations by @anicoremotion.