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🍦 VanJS: World's smallest reactive UI framework. Incredibly Powerful, Insanely Small - Everyone can build a useful UI app in an hour.

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🍦 VanJS: The Smallest Reactive UI Framework in the World

πŸ“£ Introducing VanX β†’

Enable everyone to build useful UI apps with a few lines of code, anywhere, any time, on any device.

VanJS is an ultra-lightweight, zero-dependency and unopinionated Reactive UI framework based on pure vanilla JavaScript and DOM. Programming with VanJS feels like building React apps in a scripting language, without JSX. Check-out the Hello World code below:

// Reusable components can be just pure vanilla JavaScript functions.
// Here we capitalize the first letter to follow React conventions.
const Hello = () => div(
  p("πŸ‘‹Hello"),
  ul(
    li("πŸ—ΊοΈWorld"),
    li(a({href: "https://vanjs.org/"}, "🍦VanJS")),
  ),
)

van.add(document.body, Hello())
// Alternatively, you can write:
// document.body.appendChild(Hello())

Try on jsfiddle

You can convert any HTML or MD snippet into VanJS code with our online converter.

VanJS helps you manage states and UI bindings as well, with a more natural API:

const Counter = () => {
  const counter = van.state(0)
  return div(
    "❀️ ", counter, " ",
    button({onclick: () => ++counter.val}, "πŸ‘"),
    button({onclick: () => --counter.val}, "πŸ‘Ž"),
  )
}

van.add(document.body, Counter())

Try on jsfiddle

Why VanJS?

Reactive Programming without React/JSX

Declarative DOM tree composition, reusable components, reactive state binding - VanJS offers every good aspect that React does, but without the need of React, JSX, transpiling, virtual DOM, or any hidden logic. Everything is built with simple JavaScript functions and DOM.

Grab 'n Go

No installation, no configuration, no dependencies, no transpiling, no IDE setups. Adding a line to your script or HTML file is all you need to start coding. And any code with VanJS can be pasted and executed directly in your browser's developer console. VanJS allows you to focus on the business logic of your application, rather than getting bogged down in frameworks and tools.

Ultra-Lightweight

VanJS is the smallest reactive UI framework in the world, with just 1.0kB in the gzipped minified bundle. It's 50~100 times smaller than most popular alternatives. Guess what you can get from this 1.0kB framework? All essential features of modern web frameworks - DOM templating, state, state binding, state derivation, effect, SPA, client-side routing and even hydration!

Size comparison

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

-- Antoine de Saint-ExupΓ©ry, Airman's Odyssey

Easy to Learn

Simplicity at its core. Only 5 functions (van.tags, van.add, van.state, van.derive, van.hydrate). The entire tutorial plus the API reference is just one single web page, and can be learned within 1 hour for most developers.

Performance

VanJS is among the fastest web frameworks, according to the results by krausest/js-framework-benchmark. For SSR, Mini-Van is 1.75X to 2.25X more efficient compared to React.

TypeScript Support

VanJS provides first-class support for TypeScript. With the .d.ts file in place, you'll be able to take advantage of type-checking, IntelliSense, large-scale refactoring provided by your preferred development environment. Refer to the Download Table to find the right .d.ts file to work with.

Want to Learn More?

IDE Plug-ins

See Also

A Guide to Reading VanJS Codebase

Support & Feedback

πŸ™ VanJS aims to build a better world by reducing the entry barrier of UI programming, with no intention or plan on commercialization whatsoever. If you find VanJS interesting, or could be useful for you some day, please consider starring the project. It takes just a few seconds but your support means the world to us and helps spread VanJS to a wider audience.

In the name of Vanilla of the House JavaScript, the First of its name, Smallest Reactive UI Framework, 1.0kB JSX-free Grab 'n Go Library, Scripting Language for GUI, GPT-Empowered Toolkit, by the word of Tao of the House Xin, Founder and Maintainer of VanJS, I do hereby grant you the permission of VanJS under MIT License.

Contact us: @taoxin / [email protected] / Tao Xin

Community Add-ons

VanJS can be extended via add-ons. Add-ons add more features to VanJS and/or provide an alternative styled API. Below is a curated list of add-ons built by VanJS community:

Add-on Description Author
Van Cone An SPA framework add-on for VanJS b-rad-c
van_element Web Components with VanJS Atmos4
VanJS Feather Feather Icons for VanJS thednp
van_dml.js A new flavour of composition for VanJS Eckehard
van-jsx A JSX wrapper for VanJS, for people who like the JSX syntax more cqh963852
vanjs-router A router solution for VanJS (README.md in simplified Chinese) 欧阳鹏
VanJS Routing Yet another routing solution for VanJS Kwame Opare Asiedu
VanJS Form Fully typed form state management library (with validation) for VanJS Kwame Opare Asiedu
vanjs-bootstrap VanJS Bootstrap Components Willi Commer
vanrx An ultra-lightweight Redux addon for VanJS Meddah Abdallah
VanFS 1:1 bindings from F# to VanJS Ken Okabe

Contributors (61)

If I miss anyone's contribution here, apologies for my oversight πŸ™, please comment on #87 to let me know.

Emoji key

Tao Xin
Tao Xin

🎨 πŸ’» πŸ“– πŸ’‘
Wei Sun
Wei Sun

πŸ›
Ryan Olson
Ryan Olson

πŸ–‹
Tamotsu Takahashi
Tamotsu Takahashi

πŸ’»
icecream17
icecream17

πŸ’»
enpitsulin
enpitsulin

πŸ’‘ πŸ’»
Elliot Ford
Elliot Ford

πŸ’»
andrewgryan
andrewgryan

🎨 πŸ’» πŸ›
FredericH
FredericH

πŸ’‘ πŸ’»
ebraminio
ebraminio

πŸ’» ⚠️
Eckehard
Eckehard

πŸ’» πŸ”Œ
Austin Merrick
Austin Merrick

πŸ’» πŸ€” 🎨
Lee Byonghun
Lee Byonghun

πŸ’»
caputdraconis
caputdraconis

πŸ’»
Achille Lacoin
Achille Lacoin

πŸ’»
cqh
cqh

πŸ’» πŸ”Œ
awesome
awesome

πŸ“Ή
artydev
artydev

πŸ’‘ πŸ’¬
Neven DREAN
Neven DREAN

πŸ’‘ πŸ›
Stephen Handley
Stephen Handley

πŸ’‘
Ionut Stoica
Ionut Stoica

πŸ€”
Rasmus Schultz
Rasmus Schultz

πŸ€”
cloudspeech
cloudspeech

πŸ€”
Daniel Upshaw
Daniel Upshaw

πŸ”Œ
barrymun
barrymun

πŸ’‘
Giulio Malventi
Giulio Malventi

πŸ–‹ πŸ›
Yahia Berashish
Yahia Berashish

πŸ› πŸ’» πŸ”Œ πŸ€” πŸ’‘
Phil Schumann
Phil Schumann

πŸ›
RaphaΓ«l Gauthier
RaphaΓ«l Gauthier

πŸ’» πŸ”Œ
Nail
Nail

πŸ’» πŸ”Œ
Brian Takita
Brian Takita

πŸ› πŸ€”
Jonny Fillmore
Jonny Fillmore

πŸ›
Lima Neto
Lima Neto

πŸ–‹
b rad c
b rad c

πŸ’» πŸ”Œ
欧阳鹏
欧阳鹏

πŸ”Œ πŸ“Ή
Daniel Mazurkiewicz
Daniel Mazurkiewicz

πŸ’»
Atmos4
Atmos4

πŸ’» πŸ”Œ
Kwame Opare Asiedu
Kwame Opare Asiedu

πŸ”Œ πŸ’‘
ali-alnasser570
ali-alnasser570

πŸ€”
Auryn Engel
Auryn Engel

πŸ“Ή
Samuel Wyndham
Samuel Wyndham

πŸ“Ή
sekoyo
sekoyo

πŸ›
Owen Furnell
Owen Furnell

πŸ›
MrVoltz
MrVoltz

πŸ›
Kane
Kane

πŸ’‘
Vlad Sirenko
Vlad Sirenko

πŸ’‘ πŸ’»
θ‘£ε‡―
θ‘£ε‡―

πŸ’‘
Meddah Abdallah
Meddah Abdallah

πŸ”Œ
Miroslaw
Miroslaw

πŸ›
Jon Nyman
Jon Nyman

πŸ€”
ericraider33
ericraider33

πŸ›
Ken Okabe
Ken Okabe

πŸ”Œ
Nick
Nick

πŸ’‘
thednp
thednp

πŸ”Œ πŸ’»
Bairui Su
Bairui Su

πŸ’»
jroush-ipg
jroush-ipg

πŸ›
kangaroolab
kangaroolab

πŸ’‘
Graham Stratford
Graham Stratford

πŸ›
Kursat Aktas
Kursat Aktas

πŸ’» πŸ”Œ
bleistivt
bleistivt

πŸ›
David Bismut
David Bismut

πŸ’» πŸ”Œ πŸ›