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Enhance

Aurelia provides the enhance functionality to progressively enhance existing HTML pages or parts of them. This allows you to add Aurelia's powerful data-binding and templating features to static content without managing routing or overhauling your entire application into a single-page app.

What Is Enhance in Aurelia?

The enhance method enables you to apply Aurelia's binding and templating capabilities to existing DOM elements. Instead of bootstrapping a full Aurelia application that replaces the content of your <body> or a root element, enhance You can target specific elements, enhancing them with Aurelia's features while keeping the rest of the page intact.

When to Use Enhance

Use the enhance functionality when you:

  • Have server-side rendered HTML that you want to augment with client-side interactions.
  • Need to enhance a part of the page without controlling the entire application's bootstrapping process.
  • Are integrating Aurelia into an existing application incrementally.
  • Want to add dynamic behavior to static HTML without restructuring your application into a full SPA.

How to Use Enhance

Enhancing the Entire Page

To enhance the entire page, you can call the enhance method on the Aurelia instance after configuring it:

aurelia.use.standardConfiguration();

aurelia.start().then(() => {
  aurelia.enhance();
});

This will compile and bind the entire DOM using an empty binding context.

Enhancing Part of a Page

To enhance a specific element or portion of the page, you can pass the element and an optional binding context to the enhance method:

let element = document.querySelector('#partial-area');
let viewModel = { message: 'Hello from Aurelia!' };

aurelia.start().then(() => {
  aurelia.enhance(viewModel, element);
});

Alternatively, using the TemplatingEngine:

import { TemplatingEngine } from 'aurelia-templating';

export class App {
  static inject = [TemplatingEngine];

  constructor(templatingEngine) {
    this.templatingEngine = templatingEngine;
  }

  attached() {
    let element = document.querySelector('#partial-area');
    let viewModel = { title: 'Hello from Aurelia!', description: 'This is a description from enhance.' };

    this.templatingEngine.enhance({
      element: element,
      bindingContext: viewModel
    });
  }
}

Then inside your HTML, you might have something like this:

<div>
  <p>This content is not enhanced by Aurelia.</p>
  <div id="partial-area">
    <h2>${title}</h2>
    <p>${description}</p>
  </div>
</div>

Registering Resources for Enhanced Content

When enhancing content that uses custom elements, attributes, value converters, or binding behaviors, you need to ensure that these resources are registered with Aurelia. The enhanced content will not recognize them if they are not registered globally, leading to binding errors or unexpected behavior.

Global Resource Registration

You can register resources globally using the globalResources method during Aurelia's configuration phase. This makes the resources available throughout your application, including in enhanced content.

Suppose you have a custom element my-element defined in my-element.ts:

{% code title="my-element.ts" %}

export class MyElement {
  // Custom element logic here
}

{% endcode %}

Inside of your main.ts/main.js file:

import { Aurelia } from 'aurelia-framework';
import { PLATFORM } from 'aurelia-pal';

let aurelia = new Aurelia();
aurelia.use
  .standardConfiguration()
  .globalResources(PLATFORM.moduleName('my-element'));

aurelia.start().then(() => {
  aurelia.enhance();
});
  • Bootstrap Timing: Ensure that Aurelia is started (aurelia.start()) before calling enhance. The enhance method should be called within the promise returned by start(). You can also await the start method.
  • Binding Context: Providing a binding context is optional. If omitted, the view will use an empty binding context, and bindings may not render as expected.
  • Resources Registration: If your enhanced content uses custom elements or attributes, ensure they are globally registered or specify the necessary resources during Aurelia's configuration.
  • Multiple Enhancements: You can call enhance multiple times on different elements with different binding contexts if needed.