JSX without React

Lately I've been playing around with A-Frame, a framework that allows you to build VR experiences using HTML.

My goal was to represent a directory tree as a series of platforms connected by paths, with spheres representing files.

This required creating and inserting DOM nodes for each directory or file, each with a few dynamic attributes.

Doing that with vanilla javascript became pretty tedious. Here's an example:

AFRAME.registerComponent('insert-box', {
  init() {
    const newBox = document.createElement('a-box');
    newBox.setAttribute('position', { x: 0, y: 1, z: -3 });
    newBox.setAttribute('color', '#4CC3D9');
    newBox.setAttribute('rotation', { x: 0, y: 45, z: 0 });
    newBox.setAttribute('height', 1);
    newBox.setAttribute('width', 1);
    newBox.setAttribute('material', 'side: double;');
    const sceneEl = document.querySelector('a-scene');
    sceneEl.appendChild(newBox);
  }
})

With JSX

I've mostly been writing React lately and I've grown used to how easy JSX makes templating templating.

That made me think, can I use JSX for this usecase, but without React?

A package called jsx-dom does exactly that! Used as a Babel plugin, it transpiles JSX using document.createElement and element.setAttribute, allowing you to easily write dynamic html within js.

AFRAME.registerComponent('insert-box', {
  init() {
    const sceneEl = document.querySelector('a-scene');
    sceneEl.appendChild(
      <a-box
        position={{ x: 0, y: 1, z: -3 }}
        color="#4CC3D9"
        height={1}
        width={1}
        rotation
        material={{ side: 'double' }}
      />
    );
  }
});

This approach isn't an attempt to use any of the features of React. It is just some syntactic sugar for creating DOM nodes. But it makes my code a lot easier to reason about!

Why am I doing this?

This is all part of an ongoing effort to develop a VR representation of code. I'll be presenting my experiments at RubyConf Colombia on September 20th. I'll also be writing more about my experiments as I go, so if that sounds interesting, keep an eye out for more articles!