Documentation

Table of contents

API

renderToString

This function takes a URL "entry point" to a JavaScript file that defines a custom element, and returns the static HTML output of its rendered contents.

const { html } = await renderToString(new URL('./src/index.js', import.meta.url));

// index.js
import './components/footer.js';
import './components/header.js';

const template = document.createElement('template');

template.innerHTML = `
  <style>
    :root {
      --accent: #367588;
    }
  </style>

  <wcc-header></wcc-header>

  <main>
    <h1>My Blog Post</h1>
  </main>

  <wcc-footer></wcc-footer>
`;

class Home extends HTMLElement {

  connectedCallback() {
    if (!this.shadowRoot) {
      this.attachShadow({ mode: 'open' });
      this.shadowRoot.appendChild(template.content.cloneNode(true));
    }
  }
}

export default Home;

Note: WCC will wrap or not wrap your entry point's HTML in a custom element tag if you do or do not, respectively, include a customElements.define in your entry point. WCC will use the tag name you define as the custom element tag name in the generated HTML.

You can opt-out of this by passing false as the second parameter to renderToString.

const { html } = await renderToString(new URL('...'), false);

renderFromHTML

This function takes a string of HTML and an array of any top-level custom elements used in the HTML, and returns the static HTML output of the rendered content.

const { html } = await renderFromHTML(`
  <html>
    <head>
      <title>WCC</title>
    </head>
    <body>
      <wcc-header></wcc-header>
      <h1>Home Page</h1>
      <wcc-footer></wcc-footer>
    </body>
  </html>
`,
[
  new URL('./src/components/footer.js', import.meta.url),
  new URL('./src/components/header.js', import.meta.url)
]);

For example, even if Header or Footer use import to pull in additional custom elements, only the Header and `Footer custom elements used in the "entry" HTML are needed in the array.

Metadata

renderToString and renderFromHTML return not only HTML, but also metadata about all the custom elements registered as part of rendering the entry file.

So for the given HTML:

<wcc-header></wcc-header>

<h1>Hello World</h1>

<wcc-footer></wcc-footer>

And the following conditions:

  1. index.js does not define a tag of its own, e.g. using customElements.define (e.g. it is just a "layout" component)
  2. <wcc-header> imports <wcc-navigation>

The result would be:

const { metadata } = await renderToString(new URL('./src/index.js', import.meta.url));

console.log({ metadata });
/*
 * {
 *   metadata: [
 *     'wcc-footer': { instanceName: 'Footer', moduleURL: [URL], isEntry: true },
 *     'wcc-header': { instanceName: 'Header', moduleURL: [URL],  isEntry: true },
 *     'wcc-navigation': { instanceName: 'Navigation', moduleURL: [URL],  isEntry: false }
 *   ]
 * }
 */

Progressive Hydration

To achieve an islands architecture implementation, if you add hydration="true" attribute to a custom element, e.g.

<wcc-footer hydration="true"></wcc-footer>

This will be reflected in the returned metadata array from renderToString.

/*
 * {
 *   metadata: [
 *     'wcc-footer': { instanceName: 'Footer', moduleURL: [URL], hydrate: 'true' },
 *     'wcc-header': { instanceName: 'Header', moduleURL: [URL] },
 *     'wcc-navigation': { instanceName: 'Navigation', moduleURL: [URL] }
 *   ]
 * }
 * 
 */

The benefit is that this hint can be used to defer loading of these scripts by using an IntersectionObserver (for example), instead of eagerly loading it on page load using a <script> tag.

See this example for more information.

Data

WCC provide a couple mechanisms for data loading.

Constructor Props

Often for frameworks that might have their own needs for data loading and orchestration, a top level "constructor prop" can be provided to renderToString as the final param. The prop will then be passed to the custom element's constructor when loading the module URL.

const request = new Request({ /* ... */ });
const { html } = await renderToString(new URL(moduleUrl), false, request);

This pattern plays really nice with file-based routing and SSR!

export default class PostPage extends HTMLElement {
  constructor(request) {
    super();

    const params = new URLSearchParams(request.url.slice(request.url.indexOf('?')));
    this.postId = params.get('id');
  }

  async connectedCallback() {
    const { postId } = this;
    const post = await fetch(`https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/posts/${postId}`).then(resp => resp.json());
    const { title, body } = post;

    this.innerHTML = `
      <h2>${title}</h2>
      <p>${body}</p>
    `;
  }
}

Data Loader

To support component-level data loading and hydration scenarios, a file with a custom element definition can also export a getData function to inject into the custom elements constructor at build time. This can be serialized right into the component's Shadow DOM!

For example, you could preload a counter component with an initial counter state, which would also come through the constructor.

class Counter extends HTMLElement {
  constructor(props = {}) {
    super();

    this.count = props.count;
    this.render();
  }

  // ....

  render() {
    return `
      <template shadowrootmode="open">
        <script type="application/json">
          ${JSON.stringify({ count: this.count })}
        </script>

        <div>
          <button id="inc">Increment</button>
          <span>Current Count: <span id="count">${this.count}</span></span>
          <button id="dec">Decrement</button>
        </div>
      </template>
    `;
  }
}

export async function getData() {
  return {
    count: Math.floor(Math.random() * (100 - 0 + 1) + 0)
  };
}

Conventions

TypeScript

TypeScript is supported through "type stripping", which is effectively just removing all the TypeScript and leaving only valid JavaScript, before handing off to WCC to do its compiling.

interface User {
  name: string;
}

export default class Greeting extends HTMLElement {
  connectedCallback() {
    const user: User = {
      name: this.getAttribute('name') || 'World'
    };

    this.innerHTML = `
      <h3>Hello ${user.name}! 👋</h3>
    `;
  }
}

customElements.define('wcc-greeting', Greeting);

Prerequisites

There are of couple things you will need to do to use WCC with TypeScript parsing:

  1. NodeJS version needs to be >= 18.20.0
  2. You will need to use the .ts extension
  3. Requires the --loader flag when invoking NodeJS 
    $ node --loader ./node_modules/wc-compiler/src/ts-loader.js main.ts

JSX

⚠️ Very Experimental!

Even more experimental than WCC is the option to author a rendering function for native HTMLElements, that can compile down to a zero run time, web ready custom element! It handles resolving event handling and this references and can manage some basic re-rendering lifecycles.

Example

Below is an example of what is possible right now demonstrated through a Counter component.

export default class Counter extends HTMLElement {
  constructor() {
    super();
    this.count = 0;
  }

  connectedCallback() {
    this.render(); // this is required
  }

  increment() {
    this.count += 1;
    this.render();
  }

  render() {
    const { count } = this;

    return (
      <div>
        <button onclick={this.count -= 1}> -</button>
        <span>You have clicked <span class="red">{count}</span> times</span>
        <button onclick={this.increment}> +</button>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

customElements.define('wcc-counter', Counter);

A couple things to observe in the above example:

There is an active discussion tracking features and issues in progress to continue iterating on this, so please feel free to try it out and give us your feedback!

Prerequisites

There are of couple things you will need to do to use WCC with JSX:

  1. NodeJS version needs to be >= 18.20.0
  2. You will need to use the .jsx extension
  3. Requires the --loader flag when invoking NodeJS 
    $ node --loader ./node_modules/wc-compiler/src/jsx-loader.js main.js

See our example's page for some usages of WCC + JSX. 👀

Declarative Shadow DOM

To opt-in to Declarative Shadow DOM with JSX, you will need to signal to the WCC compiler your intentions so it can accurately mount from a shadowRoot on the client side. To opt-in, simply make a call to attachShadow in your connectedCallback method.

Using, the Counter example from above, we would amend it like so:

export default class Counter extends HTMLElement {
  constructor() {
    super();
    this.count = 0;
  }

  connectedCallback() {
    if (!this.shadowRoot) {
      this.attachShadow({ mode: 'open' }); // this is required for DSD support
      this.render();
    }
  }

  // ...
}

customElements.define('wcc-counter', Counter);

(Inferred) Attribute Observability

An optional feature supported by JSX based compilation is a feature called inferredObservability. With this enabled, WCC will read any this member references in your component's render function and map each member instance to

So taking the above counter example, and opting in to this feature, we just need to enable the inferredObservability option in the component

export const inferredObservability = true;

export default class Counter extends HTMLElement {
  ...

  render() {
    const { count } = this;

    return (
      <div>
        <button onclick={this.count -= 1}> -</button>
        <span>You have clicked <span class="red">{count}</span> times</span>
        <button onclick={this.increment}> +</button>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

And so now when the attribute is set on this component, the component will re-render automatically, no need to write out observedAttributes or attributeChangedCallback!

<wcc-counter count="100"></wcc-counter>

Some notes / limitations: