Careless

A JSX/React fork for static XML generation especially useful to create ebooks, emails, xhtml for PDF generators...

Examples :

var Careless = require('careless');

// Careless works with XML namespace and custom XML tags
var XslfoExample = function(props, context) {
  return (
    <fo:page-sequence master-reference="my-page">
      <fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body">
        <fo:block>{props.children}</fo:block>
      </fo:flow>
    </fo:page-sequence>
  );
};

console.log(Careless.renderToString(<XslfoExample>Example</XslfoExample>, {}));

// Careless doesn't care if you use string for inline style
var XhtmlExample = function(props, context) {
  return (
    <div>
      <h1 style="margin-top: 5px;">{props.title}</h1>
      <div>
        {{raw: context.html}}
      </div>
    </div>
  );
};

// Careless doesn't event care if you want to pass a "global" context when rendering
console.log(Careless.renderToString(<XhtmlExample title="Careless"/>, {html: "<span>Raw HTML !</span>"}));

Why Careless

Spirit

Templating engines are often a pain:

• A new DSL to learn
• Often dumb string interpolation, easy to make mistakes
• Customer interpreter : no tooling to easily debug the templates !

JSX is a great idea by Facebook that enable us to write XML directly in JS : no need for a templating engine, your JS becomes the engine ! You can write your template directly in your JS code, you can require() your components, you can use node-debug to debug your template.

The only problem, is that ReactJS/Facebook's JSX is for building dynamic Single Page Apps. It only supports Xhtml, is very opinionated when it comes to attributes (no string inline styles, use className instead of class, ...) which is very helpful when writing a SPA, but doesn't serve us when writing a static XML document (that might even not be html).

Careless is a fork of Facebook's JSX, that allows custom tags, custom attributes and XML namespaces : the only (?) XML features missing from Careless are doctypes and XML comments.

Because for a static document you don't need state, Careless doesn't use React components, but directly JS functions.

Use case

The main use case for Careless is to build dynamically generated mails for your customers :

• You can use it to construct emails : it is particularly practical because in an email you have to inline styles (except media queries), and JSX syntax makes style inlining easier (of course you could still write your styles in a separate CSS and use a tool like juice if you want to)
• You can use it to construct paper mails using a PDF generator. If you write XSL-FO, you can use Apache FOP or RenderX to generate PDF or AFP files. If you write HTML, you can use PhantomJS, PrinceXML or Antenna House to generate PDF.

Differences with Facebook flavored JSX/React

JSX : POJO instead of createElement

Careless JSX compiles to pure POJOs (as next versions of React will do) and ES6 Object.assign for the spread attribute (also in next versions of React)

This way the creation of the nodes tree is separated from the rendering : because nodes are POJOs, you don't need to require Careless in the modules that do no rendering.

Note: When you require careless, it will polyfill Object.assign if it doesn't exist

Example :

var simpleDivWithId = <div id="div-id">Simple Div</div>;

var attrs = {style: "color: red;"};
var divWithSpreadAttrs = <div {...attrs}>Div with spread</div>;

transpiles to :

var simpleDivWithId = {type: "div", props: {id: "div-id", children: ["Simple Div"]}};

var attrs = {style: "color: red;"};
var divWithSpreadAttrs = {type: "div", props: Object.assign({}, attrs, {children: ["Div with spread"]})};

JSX : XML support (XML namespace, custom tags, ...)

Careless is not only html-focused. It will accept any kind of xml tags and even xml namespaces.

It allows you to write things like

<page-sequence master-reference="A4">
  <afp:no-operation name="nop">NOP</afp:no-operation>
  <flow flow-name="xsl-region-body" font-size="10pt">
    <block margin-top="8mm">
      Test
    </block>
  </flow>
</page-sequence>

Rendering : raw xml/html support

Careless doesn't use __dangerouslySetInnerHtml, but the simpler (riskier ?) {raw: "<div>Raw HTML</div>"}

Example:

Careless.renderToString(<div>{{raw: "<span>Raw HTML !</span>"}}</div>);

Rendering : no state, no class !

When generating a static document, there is little need for state. Therefore there is no Careless.createClass. If you want to create a component, just write a function !

function Custom(props) {
  return <span>A custom {props.content}</span>;
}

Careless.renderToString(<div><Custom content="Tag"/></div>);

Rendering : special handling of attributes

To give a CSS class to your HTML tag, just use the class attribute, not className.

Inline styles can be written directly as a string, no need to use an object if you don't want to.

// This is OK in careless but not in react
var divWithClass = <div class="header"></div>;

// This is KO in careless, but what you should do in react
var otherDivWithClass = <div classname="header"></div>;

// This is OK both in react and careless
var style = {color: "red"};
var divWithStyle = <div style={style}></div>;

// This OK only in careless (because it doesn't care), but not valid react
var otherDivWithStyle = <div style="color: red;"></div>

Context

When generating static documents, typically mails for your customers, it is very practical to have a global context containing the customer common datas. Careless allows you to pass automatically this context down to every child components.

Examples :

var Careless = require('careless');

var Recipient = function(props, context) {
  var customer = context.customer;
  return (
    <div>
            {customer.name}<br />
            {customer.address}<br />
            {customer.city}
    </div>
  );
};

var Mail = function(props, context) {
  return (
    <div>
      <Recipient />
      <div>Great discount today : {props.discount}</div>
    </div>
  );
};

var context = {
  customer: {
    name: "M. John Doe",
    address: "26 rue de Berri",
    city: "Paris"
  }
};

console.log(Careless.renderToString(<Mail discount="10%" />, context));