Proposal to Add String Rendering Method to Node Interface

[maragudk]

Proposal to Add String Rendering Method to Node Interface

[markuswustenberg]

Hi @eduardolat, thank you for the issue!

The NodeFunc, which is the function that renders an element in El, already satisfies the fmt.Stringer interface: https://github.com/maragudk/gomponents/blob/main/gomponents.go#L58

So you can do something like using fmt.Sprint to render your nodes to a string: https://go.dev/play/p/c-nSNHUKaAH

[eduardolat]

Thank you for your kind response.

Indeed I have realized that NodeFunc does satisfy the interface, however it is a bit counterintuitive that Node does not do it.

Is there any reason why Node doesn't have that method?

It would be very easy to simply do a mypage().String() which can easily suggested by the code editor instead of checking the code in the repository to see how it is implemented and notice that there is a NodeFunc function that does the task.

It is also not so intuitive due to the fact that you are always working with Node and not with NodeFunc, so you usually do not have knowledge of this function.

Would it be a good idea to add .String() to Node?
Or is it better to document NodeFunc and leave Node as is?

I leave you a couple of examples of how it is not intuitive to render as a string.

Thanks for your time!!

[markuswustenberg]

I think of it this way: The only thing that is required for a component to be able to render is to satisfy the Node interface. Implementations of that interface, such as NodeFunc, may also satisfy the fmt.Stringer interface, but that's up to the concrete implementation.

If someone writes a large component where it wouldn't make sense to keep the whole thing in RAM (say, a large HTML document or a complex SVG), I don't want to force it on them to implement a String() string function. I like the streaming-based design that io.Writer offers. I think it's quite Go-idiomatic.

So while I think I understand what you mean, I don't want to add anything to the Node interface at this point. I would suggest you write a helper function for your own purposes that takes any Node and uses a strings.Builder to create a string.

I hope this makes sense. 😊

[eduardolat]

It makes all the sense in the world, now I am very clear about your decision to do it that way, I will continue to happily use my helper when I need it.

Thank you very much for this great project.

[markuswustenberg]

I’m glad to hear that. 😊