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https://github.com/joewalker/serverdom

A browser compatible DOM for use with CommonJS / Node
https://github.com/joewalker/serverdom

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A browser compatible DOM for use with CommonJS / Node

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README 

        

About ServerDOM

===============



**Version**: 0.1 (21 September 2010)  

**Author**: Joe Walker [ joe at getahead dot org ]  

**License**: Apache v2  



ServerDOM is an implementation of the DOM in JavaScript that lives on the server

rather than in the browser. ServerDOM uses tautologistics

[node-htmlparser](http://github.com/tautologistics/node-htmlparser) to do the

nasty work of HTML parsing.



Why?

----



Server-side JavaScript brings with it the promise of being able to share logic

between the client and the server. It's nice to be able to write your code only

once.



However this is tricky with presentation logic, which often requires a DOM to

work against. Enter ServerDOM to provide a minimalist browser environment so

you can do progressive enhancement type things without writing everything twice.



What is the Roadmap?

--------------------



If there's not much interest, the the roadmap ends here, because it's currently

good enough for me, but if people like it then we can probably sort out some

releases like "Supports JQuery v1.4", "Supports DOM levels 0-3" and so on. I

will be relying on help making it better though.



How do I get started?

---------------------



Step 1: Install [Node](http://nodejs.org/)



Step 2: Install and use ServerDOM:



    $ git clone [email protected]:joewalker/serverdom.git

    Initialized empty Git repository in /.../serverdom/.git/

    [blah blah]

    $ cd serverdom

    $ git clone http://github.com/tautologistics/node-htmlparser.git

    Initialized empty Git repository in /.../serverdom/node-htmlparser/.git/

    [blah blah]

    $ node test/domtest.js

    completed

    $ vi test/domtest.js

    "I see! It works like a browser DOM, but you start with 'new Document(...)'"



To check that dom/js works in the same way as the browser, just load

`test/test.html` into your browser. It will run the test suite against the a

real DOM. The results should be the same.



How good is it?

---------------



Just good enough for my needs at the moment, which is to say, very probably

not good enough for yours. It's a good way to covering most of the obvious stuff

but it's a long way from being a full browser mock-up.



How long before it's complete?

------------------------------



It's probably not possible to write a full mock browser in pure JavaScript.

For example, several browsers have a fake document.all that appears to not

exist until you use it, and then it magically works



    if (!document.all) { console.log('missing all'); } // missing all

    console.log(document.all.someId);                  // debugs an element



Maybe there's a smart way of doing this, but the point remains, trying to

replicate the full browser in pure JavaScript is probably a fools errand.



Doesn't that render ServerDOM pointless?

----------------------------------------



It means that you probably can't use ServerDOM to do unit tests. We can't hope

to mock the full insanity of the browser environment, but we can use it for the

more idealistic world of replicating mailable view logic. That is to say, if you

have some presentation logic that uses the mad document.all behaviour (*) then

you can still use ServerDOM, but by fixing your script.



(* I know why document.all behaves the way it does - sometimes it pays to

pretend to be mad if you're dealing with someone that expects insanity - however

that doesn't make your behaviour sane, only justifiably insane ;-)



Comments, complaints, etc: [ joe at getahead dot org ]