solid

Introduction to SolidJS

SolidJS is a declarative JavaScript library designed for building user interfaces efficiently. Unlike many other libraries that rely on a Virtual DOM to manage updates to the user interface, SolidJS directly compiles its templates into real DOM nodes, ensuring fine-grained and efficient updates.

Key Concepts and Features

• Fine-Grained Updates: SolidJS provides fine-grained updates to the real DOM, ensuring that only the parts of the UI that need updating are changed, resulting in high performance.
• Declarative Data Management: Users can model application state using reactive primitives, simplifying state management throughout the application.
• Render-Once Mental Model: Components in SolidJS are simply JavaScript functions that run once to set up the view. This reduces the overhead often associated with components re-rendering repeatedly.
• Automatic Dependency Tracking: When reactive state is accessed, it automatically tracks dependencies, updating only the necessary parts of the UI when the state changes.

Example Usage

Here is a simple example of a SolidJS component using its core features:

import { createSignal } from "solid-js";
import { render } from "solid-js/web";

function Counter() {
  const [count, setCount] = createSignal(0);
  const doubleCount = () => count() * 2;
  
  return (
    <>
      <button onClick={() => setCount(c => c + 1)}>
        {doubleCount()}
      </button>
    </>
  );
}

render(Counter, document.getElementById("app")!);

This code snippet demonstrates how SolidJS handles a counter with double value updates using its createSignal reactive primitive.

Why Choose SolidJS?

Performant

SolidJS is built with performance in mind. It performs at speeds close to optimized vanilla JavaScript, thanks to its direct compiling approach. The library is both small and fast, making it an excellent choice for client-rendered and server-rendered applications.

Powerful and Flexible

SolidJS is equipped with powerful features expected from a modern UI framework, including:

• Built-in state management with Context and Stores
• Support for concurrent rendering and Suspense
• Full server-side rendering (SSR) capabilities
• Streaming and progressive hydration for faster interactivity

Pragmatic Design

With SolidJS, doing more with less is the key. The library allows simple and composable code without hidden caveats. Components being just functions provides flexibility in organizing code with a focus on maintaining a simple rendering system.

Productive Development

SolidJS leverages familiar tools like JSX and TypeScript, integrating seamlessly into the Vite ecosystem. The growing SolidJS community also offers a variety of custom primitives and component libraries to extend its functionalities easily.

Getting Started with SolidJS

Starting with SolidJS is easy. A simple application can be set up using the following commands for JavaScript or TypeScript:

For JavaScript:

> npx degit solidjs/templates/js my-app
> cd my-app
> npm i
> npm run dev

For TypeScript:

> npx degit solidjs/templates/ts my-app
> cd my-app
> npm i
> npm run dev

These commands bootstrap a minimal, client-rendered application powered by Vite, allowing developers to explore SolidJS right away.

Community and Ecosystem

SolidJS boasts a supportive community, with active discussions on platforms like Discord. There's also a range of contributors and sponsors helping to grow and sustain the project. For support, interaction with fellow developers, and new contributions, the SolidJS community is active and welcoming.

For more technical resources and examples, users can visit the official SolidJS documentation and explore sample projects to get better acquainted with the library's capabilities.

Conclusion

SolidJS shines as a project that excels in performance while providing a robust and flexible environment for developing modern web applications. Its fine-grained reactivity and pragmatic design make it a suitable choice for developers looking for speed and simplicity combined.