v0.2.0
Dioxus v0.2 Release: TUI, Router, Fermi, and Tooling
March 9, 2022
Thanks to these amazing folks for their financial support on OpenCollective:
Thanks to these amazing folks for their code contributions:
Just over two months in, and we already a ton of awesome changes to Dioxus!
Dioxus is a recently-released library for building interactive user interfaces (GUI) with Rust. It is built around a Virtual DOM, making it portable for the web, desktop, server, mobile, and more. Dioxus looks and feels just like React, so if you know React, then you'll feel right at home.
fn app(cx: Scope) -> Element {
let mut count = use_state(&cx, || 0);
cx.render(rsx! {
h1 { "Count: {count}" }
button { onclick: move |_| count += 1, "+" }
button { onclick: move |_| count -= 1, "-" }
})
}
What's new?
A ton of stuff happened in this release; 550+ commits, 23 contributors, 2 minor releases, and 6 backers on Open Collective.
Some of the major new features include:
- We now can render into the terminal, similar to Ink.JS - a huge thanks to @Demonthos
- We have a new router in the spirit of React-Router @autarch
- We now have Fermi for global state management in the spirit of Recoil.JS
- Our desktop platform got major upgrades, getting closer to parity with Electron @mrxiaozhuox
- Our CLI tools now support HTML-to-RSX translation for converting 3rd party HTML into Dioxus @mrxiaozhuox
- Dioxus-Web is sped up by 2.5x with JS-based DOM manipulation (3x faster than React)
We also fixed and improved a bunch of stuff - check out the full list down below.
A New Renderer: Your terminal!
When Dioxus was initially released, we had very simple support for logging Dioxus elements out as TUI elements. In the past month or so, @Demonthos really stepped up and made the new crate a reality.
New Router
We totally revamped the router, switching away from the old yew-router approach to the more familiar React-Router. It's less type-safe but provides more flexibility and support for beautiful URLs.
Apps with routers are really simple now. It's easy to compose the "Router", a "Route", and "Links" to define how your app is laid out:
fn app(cx: Scope) -> Element {
cx.render(rsx! {
Router {
onchange: move |_| log::info!("Route changed!"),
ul {
Link { to: "/", li { "Go home!" } }
Link { to: "users", li { "List all users" } }
Link { to: "blog", li { "Blog posts" } }
}
Route { to: "/", "Home" }
Route { to: "/users", "User list" }
Route { to: "/users/:name", User {} }
Route { to: "/blog", "Blog list" }
Route { to: "/blog/:post", BlogPost {} }
Route { to: "", "Err 404 Route Not Found" }
}
})
}
We're also using hooks to parse the URL parameters and segments so you can interact with the router from anywhere deeply nested in your app.
#[derive(Deserialize)]
struct Query { name: String }
fn BlogPost(cx: Scope) -> Element {
let post = use_route(&cx).segment("post")?;
let query = use_route(&cx).query::<Query>()?;
cx.render(rsx!{
"Viewing post {post}"
"Name selected: {query}"
})
}
Give a big thanks to @autarch for putting in all the hard work to make this new router a reality.
The Router guide is available here - thanks to @dogedark.
Fermi for Global State Management
Managing state in your app can be challenging. Building global state management solutions can be even more challenging. For the first big attempt at building a global state management solution for Dioxus, we chose to keep it simple and follow in the footsteps of the Recoil.JS project.
Fermi uses the concept of "Atoms" for global state. These individual values can be get/set from anywhere in your app. Using state with Fermi is basically as simple as use_state
.
// Create a single value in an "Atom"
static TITLE: Atom<&str> = |_| "Hello";
// Read the value from anywhere in the app, subscribing to any changes
fn app(cx: Scope) -> Element {
let title = use_read(&cx, TITLE);
cx.render(rsx!{
h1 { "{title}" }
Child {}
})
}
// Set the value from anywhere in the app
fn Child(cx: Scope) -> Element {
let set_title = use_set(&cx, TITLE);
cx.render(rsx!{
button {
onclick: move |_| set_title("goodbye"),
"Say goodbye"
}
})
}
Inline Props Macro
For internal components, explicitly declaring props structs can become tedious. That's why we've built the new inline_props
macro. This macro lets you inline your props definition right into your component function arguments.
Simply add the inline_props
macro to your component:
#[inline_props]
fn Child<'a>(
cx: Scope,
name: String,
age: String,
onclick: EventHandler<'a, ClickEvent>
) -> Element {
cx.render(rsx!{
button {
"Hello, {name}"
"You are {age} years old"
onclick: move |evt| onclick.call(evt)
}
})
}
You won't be able to document each field or attach attributes so you should refrain from using it in libraries.
Props optional fields
Sometimes you don't want to specify every value in a component's props, since there might a lot. That's why the Props
macro now supports optional fields. You can use a combination of default
, strip_option
, and optional
to tune the exact behavior of properties fields.
#[derive(Props, PartialEq)]
struct ChildProps {
#[props(default = "client")]
name: String,
#[props(default)]
age: Option<u32>,
#[props(optional)]
age: Option<u32>,
}
// then to use the accompanying component
rsx!{
Child {
name: "asd",
}
}
Dioxus Web Speed Boost
We've changed how DOM patching works in Dioxus-Web; now, all of the DOM manipulation code is written in TypeScript and shared between our web, desktop, and mobile runtimes.
On an M1-max, the "create-rows" operation used to take 45ms. Now, it takes a mere 17ms - 3x faster than React. We expect an upcoming optimization to bring this number as low as 3ms.
Under the hood, we have a new string interning engine to cache commonly used tags and values on the Rust <-> JS boundary, resulting in significant performance improvements.
Overall, Dioxus apps are even more snappy than before.
Dioxus Desktop Window Context
A very welcome change, thanks AGAIN to @mrxiaozhuox is support for imperatively controlling the desktop window from your Dioxus code.
A bunch of new methods were added:
- Minimize and maximize window
- Close window
- Focus window
- Enable devtools on the fly
And more!
In addition, Dioxus Desktop now autoresolves asset locations, so you can easily add local images, JS, CSS, and then bundle it into an .app without hassle.
You can now build entirely borderless desktop apps:
CLI Tool
Thanks to the amazing work by @mrxiaozhuox, our CLI tool is fixed and working better than ever. The Dioxus-CLI sports a new development server, an HTML to RSX translation engine, a cargo fmt
-style command, a configuration scheme, and much more.
Unlike its counterpart, Trunk.rs
, the dioxus-cli supports running examples and tests, making it easier to test web-based projects and showcase web-focused libraries.
Async Improvements
Working with async isn't the easiest part of Rust. To help improve things, we've upgraded async support across the board in Dioxus.
First, we upgraded the use_future
hook. It now supports dependencies, which let you regenerate a future on the fly as its computed values change. It's never been easier to add datafetching to your Rust Web Apps:
fn RenderDog(cx: Scope, breed: String) -> Element {
let dog_request = use_future(&cx, (breed,), |(breed,)| async move {
reqwest::get(format!("https://dog.ceo/api/breed/{}/images/random", breed))
.await
.unwrap()
.json::<DogApi>()
.await
});
cx.render(match dog_request.value() {
Some(Ok(url)) => rsx!{ img { url: "{url}" } },
Some(Err(url)) => rsx!{ span { "Loading dog failed" } },
None => rsx!{ "Loading dog..." }
})
}
Additionally, we added better support for coroutines. You can now start, stop, resume, and message with asynchronous tasks. The coroutine is automatically exposed to the rest of your app via the Context API. For the vast majority of apps, Coroutines can satisfy all of your state management needs:
fn App(cx: Scope) -> Element {
let sync_task = use_coroutine(&cx, |rx| async move {
connect_to_server().await;
let state = MyState::new();
while let Some(action) = rx.next().await {
reduce_state_with_action(action).await;
}
});
cx.render(rsx!{
button {
onclick: move |_| sync_task.send(SyncAction::Username("Bob")),
"Click to sync your username to the server"
}
})
}
All New Features
We've covered the major headlining features, but there were so many more!
- A new router @autarch
- Fermi for global state management
- Translation of docs and Readme into Chinese @mrxiaozhuox
- 2.5x speedup by using JS-based DOM manipulation (3x faster than React)
- Beautiful documentation overhaul
- InlineProps macro allows definition of props within a component's function arguments
- Improved dev server, hot reloading for desktop and web apps @mrxiaozhuox
- Templates: desktop, web, web/hydration, Axum + SSR, and more @mrxiaozhuox
- Web apps ship with console_error_panic_hook enabled, so you always get tracebacks
- Enhanced Hydration and server-side-rendering (recovery, validation)
- Optional fields for component properties
- Introduction of the
EventHandler
type - Improved use_state hook to be closer to react
- Improved use_ref hook to be easier to use in async contexts
- New use_coroutine hook for carefully controlling long-running async tasks
- Prevent Default attribute
- Provide Default Context allows injection of global contexts to the top of the app
- push_future now has a spawn counterpart to be more consistent with rust
- Add gap and gap_row attributes @FruitieX
- File Drag n Drop support for Desktop
- Custom handler support for desktop
- Forms now collect all their values in oninput/onsubmit
- Async tasks now are dropped when components unmount
- Right-click menus are now disabled by default
Fixes
- Windows support improved across the board
- Linux support improved across the board
- Bug in Calculator example
- Improved example running support
A ton more! Dioxus is now much more stable than it was at release!
Breaking Changes and Migrations
- UseState is not
Copy
- but now supports Clone for use in async.for_async
has been removed - UseFuture and UseEffect now take dependency tuples
- UseCoroutine is now exposed via the context API and takes a receiver
- Async tasks are canceled when components are dropped
- The ContextAPI no longer uses RC to share state - anything that is
Clone
can be shared
Community Additions
- Styled Components macro @Zomatree
- Dioxus-Websocket hook @FruitieX
- Home automation server app @FruitieX
- Video Recording app
- Music streaming app @autarch
- NixOS dependency installation @FruitieX
- Vercel Deploy Template @lucifer1004
- Render Katex in Dioxus
- Render PrismJS in Dioxus
- Compile-time correct TailwindCSS
- Autogenerate tailwind CSS
- Heroicons library
- RSX -> HTML translator app
- Toast Support
- New Examples: forms, routers, linking, tui, and more!
Looking Forward
Dioxus is still under rapid, active development. We'd love for you to get involved! For the next release, we're looking to add:
- Native WGPU renderer support
- A query library like react-query
- Multiwindow desktop app support
- Full LiveView integrations for Axum, Warp, and Actix
- A builder pattern for elements (no need for rsx!)
- Autoformatting of rsx! code (like cargo fmt)
- Improvements to the VSCode Extension
If you're interested in building an app with Dioxus, make sure to check us out on:
What's Changed
- Jk/release by @jkelleyrtp in #100
- CI: Test on macOS by @alexkirsz in #102
- Boolattrs limit type by @mrxiaozhuox in #103
- CI: Enable clippy by @alexkirsz in #101
- Fix: string formatting detection in component fields by @jkelleyrtp in #108
- fix: ssr respects bool attrs by @jkelleyrtp in #109
- feat(example:todomvc): add editing support by @sassman in #112
- fix: cursor jumping in desktop inputs by @jkelleyrtp in #113
- Flatten optional prop attributes by @jkelleyrtp in #111
- File Drag and Drop support by @jkelleyrtp in #95
- docs: allow build core_reference/children example by @yuniruyuni in #119
- Fix typo in docs by @b12f in #118
- fix: edit
git-repository-url
by @mrxiaozhuox in #123 - Add
Chinese
LanguageReadme
and add some info into README.md by @mrxiaozhuox in #122 - Update ZH_CN.md by @mrxiaozhuox in #124
- feat: add "optional" flag for props by @jkelleyrtp in #128
- fix: allow eventhandler to derive default by @jkelleyrtp in #127
- Update ZH_CN.md by @mrxiaozhuox in #131
- A partial implementation of the router and associated bits by @autarch in #107
- The desktop app will default open link in browser by @mrxiaozhuox in #133
- fix:
dog-app
breed change by @mrxiaozhuox in #138 - fix: ssr + hydration event listeners by @jkelleyrtp in #140
- feat: allow context providers to provide for the base scope by @jkelleyrtp in #139
- feat: unify web and desktop interpreter with the same typescript codebase by @jkelleyrtp in #121
- feat: remove dioxus id on non-event elements by @jkelleyrtp in #143
- Fix various typos and grammar nits by @autarch in #145
- Add gap and row_gap to style_trait_methods by @FruitieX in #146
- docs: add azul compairson by @jkelleyrtp in #148
- Feat: add console_error_panic_hook by default for wasm by @jkelleyrtp in #150
- tweak: drop hooks before resetting bump arena by @jkelleyrtp in #152
- feat: add "spawn" method for futures by @jkelleyrtp in #153
- Make clippy happier on the examples. by @jkelleyrtp in #154
- Correct dioxus web docs to include the third paramter by @jkelleyrtp in #156
- Hooks: Change UseState to be like react's use_state by @jkelleyrtp in #129
- Connect the onchange listener for the Router by @jkelleyrtp in #158
- Default asset server by @jkelleyrtp in #166
- fix: use_route should subscribe to changes to the route by @jkelleyrtp in #168
- Make log message in Link component trace level, not debug by @autarch in #170
- feat: enable use_router by @jkelleyrtp in #169
- Add some
Issue
template by @mrxiaozhuox in #167 - release: 0.1.8 by @jkelleyrtp in #177
- Fix the license field in Cargo.toml to be valid SPDX by @autarch in #181
- Fix misspelled variable name in usestate.rs by @autarch in #178
- fix: dioxus web prevents default in nested targets by @jkelleyrtp in #187
DesktopContext
Wrap & Inject by @mrxiaozhuox in #180- fix: nodes being unmounted when used in highly nested contexts by @jkelleyrtp in #182
- chore: make the js interpreter its own crate so we can rely on it in web/desktop by @jkelleyrtp in #192
- fix: diffing allows component reuse by @jkelleyrtp in #193
- fix: allow scopes and nodes to be missing by @jkelleyrtp in #195
- wip: Makefile setup by @t1m0t in #190
- fix ci test workflow by @t1m0t in #202
- fix: allow prevent_default on svg by @jkelleyrtp in #199
- Improve test speed in the CI by @t1m0t in #206
- fix: remove code generation entirely by @jkelleyrtp in #200
- Update ZH_CN.md by @mrxiaozhuox in #209
- Pass form values as a hashmap on
oninput
/onsubmit
by @jkelleyrtp in #147 - docs: improve components and elements by @jkelleyrtp in #106
- fix: add a check for dangerousinnerhtml in interpreter by @jkelleyrtp in #212
- feat: use serde-wasm-bindgen crate for speedup by @jkelleyrtp in #217
- fix: update the sample by @activeguild in #218
- fix: class attributes don't adhere to es6 spec by @jkelleyrtp in #219
- fix: always prevent default on
A
tags in desktop by @jkelleyrtp in #220 - Code coverage setup by @t1m0t in #214
- Minor docs improvements, chapters 1-5 by @rMazeiks in #224
- More guide improvements, chapters 6-7 by @rMazeiks in #226
- feat: add docs autdeploy by @jkelleyrtp in #228
- Add more Desktop Window Api by @mrxiaozhuox in #227
- fix some uncaught error during runtime test by @t1m0t in #230
- fix code coverage and docs workflows by @t1m0t in #234
- try fix syntax workflow by @t1m0t in #235
- Transparent window means transparent WebView by @blemelin in #231
- Clean up desktop's index.html by @asaaki in #236
- Use
===
when rhs is string by @oovm in #241 - Add default desktop icon by @oovm in #242
- Fixed
bool_attr
cannot be use by @mrxiaozhuox in #245 - Fix typo by @dazmaks in #249
- Fix closure signature for use_ref example in interactivity docs by @autarch in #252
- Use futures-channel instead of async-channel in rIC/rAF code by @jkelleyrtp in #253
- Update to wry 0.13; support IPC, devtool, and feature flags by @asaaki in #243
- Make all packages which require futures-channel ask for the same version by @autarch in #254
- Documentation Fixes by @DogeDark in #250
- fix unnecessary div by @HansTrashy in #258
- Login Form Example by @JtotheThree in #94
- feat: integrate fermi into the main repo by @jkelleyrtp in #261
- docs(reference/platforms/ssr): fixing example and commands by @malcolmrebughini in #263
- feat: split out rsx into its own crate by @jkelleyrtp in #132
- Disable reload context menu in production by @jkelleyrtp in #271
- docs: actually document the use_ref hook by @jkelleyrtp in #270
- fix: ping window after virtualdom is ready by @jkelleyrtp in #267
- fixing build warnings in hello world example by @intrepion in #273
- Improve scheduler methods in ScopeState by @overlisted in #277
- Add options for compilation on systems that lack libappindicator3 by @jkur in #282
- fix: add ns param for removeAttribute by @BarryYan in #275
- feat: canoncialize assets for macOS, Windows, and Linux by @jkelleyrtp in #278
- docs: add
deny(missing_docs)
is many more places by @jkelleyrtp in #272 - Overhaul async hooks: use_future, use_coroutine, use_effect (new) by @jkelleyrtp in #161
- feat: add all the css by @jkelleyrtp in #233
- Add
Dioxus-cli
Document by @mrxiaozhuox in #269 - fix: actually remove nodes in keyed_diff_middle by @jkelleyrtp in #287
- Add
cli
document build by @mrxiaozhuox in #286 - feat: auto cancel tasks when scopes are dropped by @jkelleyrtp in #208
- Make use_state a single value again by @jkelleyrtp in #290
- Feat: abstract the router on a per-platform basis and add docs by @jkelleyrtp in #203
- Fixed Document by @mrxiaozhuox in #293
- Docs: actually finish all of the documentation. by @jkelleyrtp in #295
- feat: memoize useref by tracking mutations by @jkelleyrtp in #297
- feat: add tui directly into dioxus mainline by @jkelleyrtp in #299
- Release post for Dioxus v0.2 by @jkelleyrtp in #163
- Change Docs -
trunk
todioxus-cli
by @mrxiaozhuox in #300
New Contributors
- @sassman made their first contribution in #112
- @yuniruyuni made their first contribution in #119
- @b12f made their first contribution in #118
- @FruitieX made their first contribution in #146
- @t1m0t made their first contribution in #190
- @activeguild made their first contribution in #218
- @rMazeiks made their first contribution in #224
- @blemelin made their first contribution in #231
- @asaaki made their first contribution in #236
- @oovm made their first contribution in #241
- @dazmaks made their first contribution in #249
- @HansTrashy made their first contribution in #258
- @JtotheThree made their first contribution in #94
- @malcolmrebughini made their first contribution in #263
- @intrepion made their first contribution in #273
- @overlisted made their first contribution in #277
- @jkur made their first contribution in #282
- @BarryYan made their first contribution in #275
Full Changelog: v0.1.7...v0.2.0