What is SolidJS? Why should use it?
SolidJS is a user interface (UI) library for building efficient and easy-to-maintain dynamic web applications. It is an open source library written in TypeScript and uses concepts from Functional Reactive Programming to provide high code reusability and limit the complexity of managing application state. SolidJS also provides a different approach to creating UI components with a simpler, more readable and understandable syntax.
Compare SolidJS and ReactJS
SolidJS is a user interface (UI) library for building web applications. It is similar to ReactJS in its approach to UI development. However, SolidJS has several advantages over ReactJS, including:
- Better Performance: SolidJS uses reactivity, which allows components to be updated more quickly and efficiently than ReactJS.
- Simplify the source code: SolidJS uses pure JavaScript syntax and does not need JSX (a JavaScript extension) like ReactJS. This simplifies the source code and makes it easier to read.
- Easier side-effects: SolidJS has an “effects” feature that allows asynchronous tasks to be handled in a simpler and easier way than ReactJS.
However, since SolidJS is a newer library than ReactJS, it has some limitations in terms of community diversity and support documentation compared to ReactJS.
SolidJS Setup Guide
To setup SolidJS, follow these steps:
- Create a new folder to contain your project.
- Open terminal and move to new folder.
- Use the following command to create a new SolidJS project:
1 2 | npx degit solidjs/templates/ts my-solid-app |
Where, “my-solid-app” is the folder name for your project.
- Navigate to the project directory:
1 2 | cd my-solid-app |
- Install dependencies:
1 2 | npm install |
or
1 2 | yarn |
- Launch the application:
1 2 | yarn dev |
After the above steps are completed, your SolidJS application will be running on http://localhost:5000 or another port (if already used).
Instructions for creating basic templates with SolidJS
To create a basic SolidJS application, you need to install SolidJS and some other tools. Once installed, you can create a SolidJS application template by following these steps:
- Using Node.js and npm to install SolidJS via command line:
1 2 | npm install solid-js |
- Create a basic HTML file and link to SolidJS:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 | <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <title>My SolidJS App</title> <script type="module"> import { render, html } from 'https://cdn.skypack.dev/solid-js'; import App from './App.js'; render(() => html`<${App} />`, document.body); </script> </head> <body> </body> </html> |
- Create a simple SolidJS component in a new JavaScript file and export it:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 | import { html } from 'https://cdn.skypack.dev/solid-js'; export default function App() { return html` <div> <h1>Hello, SolidJS!</h1> <p>Welcome to my SolidJS app.</p> </div> `; } |
- Launch the SolidJS application by running the HTML file in a web browser. With these steps, you have created a basic template for SolidJS application. You can continue to develop and add more complex components and features to your application.
Conclude
SolidJS is an open source library for building user interfaces for web applications. With its reactivity-based architecture, SolidJS supports performance optimization and easy management of application state. It also provides JSX syntax very close to ReactJS, so if you are familiar with ReactJS then learning SolidJS will be very easy.
Although SolidJS is a relatively new library, it has attracted the interest of the developer community. SolidJS has a lot of potential for future growth and is predicted to become one of the popular choices for building web applications.
However, SolidJS currently doesn’t have as large of a community as ReactJS, which can make it more difficult to find support and documentation. If you are interested in SolidJS, you should learn carefully before using it for your project.