Despite being used at so many companies, Web Components have faced a lot of pushback from JavaScript developers that use frameworks to target the web. ☹️
What you may not realize is that the web has a way to create new HTML tags that can be used in ANY JS framework or place that returns HTML and you can progressively enchance applications. 🤩
Since they are custom HTML tags, if you swap implementations, you do not need to update where it is used and you can ship components a separate files instead of one big bundle.
We need to create a factory on the dart side that can create these JS classes without actually being able to create a class in the normal way (since JS and Dart classes are different).
There is a great API Reflect.construct() which allows us to take a normal function and invoke it class a class constructor. JavaScript did not always support native classes and was only added with ES6.
By using this built in API, we can create the classes with just pure Dart:
import 'dart:js_interop';
import 'dart:js_interop_unsafe';
import 'package:web/web.dart';
class WebComponent<T extends HTMLElement> {
late T element;
final String extendsType = 'HTMLElement';
void connectedCallback() {}
void disconnectedCallback() {}
void adoptedCallback() {}
void attributeChangedCallback(
String name,
String? oldValue,
String? newValue,
) {}
Iterable<String> get observedAttributes => [];
bool get formAssociated => false;
ElementInternals? get internals => element['_internals'] as ElementInternals?;
set internals(ElementInternals? value) {
element['_internals'] = value;
}
R getRoot<R extends JSObject>() {
final hasShadow = element.shadowRoot != null;
return (hasShadow ? element.shadowRoot! : element) as R;
}
static void define(String tag, WebComponent Function() create) {
final obj = _factory(create);
window.customElements.define(tag, obj);
}
}
@JS('Reflect.construct')
external JSAny _reflectConstruct(
JSObject target,
JSAny args,
JSFunction constructor,
);
final _instances = <HTMLElement, WebComponent>{};
JSFunction _factory(WebComponent Function() create) {
final base = create();
final elemProto = globalContext[base.extendsType] as JSObject;
late JSAny obj;
JSAny constructor() {
final args = <String>[].jsify()!;
final self = _reflectConstruct(elemProto, args, obj as JSFunction);
final el = self as HTMLElement;
_instances.putIfAbsent(el, () => create()..element = el);
return self;
}
obj = constructor.toJS;
obj = obj as JSObject;
final observedAttributes = base.observedAttributes;
final formAssociated = base.formAssociated;
obj['prototype'] = elemProto['prototype'];
obj['observedAttributes'] = observedAttributes.toList().jsify()!;
obj['formAssociated'] = formAssociated.jsify()!;
final prototype = obj['prototype'] as JSObject;
prototype['connectedCallback'] = (HTMLElement instance) {
_instances[instance]?.connectedCallback();
}.toJSCaptureThis;
prototype['disconnectedCallback'] = (HTMLElement instance) {
_instances[instance]?.disconnectedCallback();
_instances.remove(instance);
}.toJSCaptureThis;
prototype['adoptedCallback'] = (HTMLElement instance) {
_instances[instance]?.adoptedCallback();
}.toJSCaptureThis;
prototype['attributeChangedCallback'] = (
HTMLElement instance,
String name,
String? oldName,
String? newName,
) {
_instances[instance]?.attributeChangedCallback(name, oldName, newName);
}.toJSCaptureThis;
return obj as JSFunction;
}
This may seem like a lot to digest, but that is ok. It simply does some JS magic to upgrade functions to classes and provide the correct callbacks to create the web components.
If you want a package that does this for you, html_web_components is on pub.dev.
To create a Web Component like we did before, we can just extend the class and define the component.
This should look very similar (that is the goal) and makes it so easy to publish the compoents or build a full web application with it.
Conclusion
Web Components allow you to upgrade your client side interactivity while having the freedom to use server rendering to create the template files or just use a SPA on the frontend. You can take these components and use them in ANY JS frameworks! 🤯
I would highly suggest that you try it out for yourself before you write off Web Components. This is especially true for Flutter developers wanting an alternative to Flutter web (and even use with Jaspr).
You can take advantage of Dart's great ecosystem of packages on pub.dev and the ability to compile to WASM and JS. If you use a builder like peanut it will even create the script that tries to load WASM and can fallback to JS for you 🔥
If you want to see the code, you can find it on GitHub. Reach out if you have any questions or want to show off something cool you built with them!