htmxtools

htmxtools is a collection of constants and utilities for working with htmx from Go.

htmx plays REALLY nice with Go and (somewhat less nice but still nice) Go templates.

General usage

There are different things in here for different use cases - http middleware as well as some constants and helpers for htmx requests

Constants and such

There are quite a few constants and enums for some various bits of htmx that can help cut down on some error prone duplication.

Response Headers

The response headers can be used as described here: https://htmx.org/reference/#response_headers and they are one of the coolest things about htmx.

You can do things like ensure the browser url bar and history point to a real html page (as opposed to a fragment which is the default when using hx-get and the like).

I use this exact pattern in another project when an add or delete call is made to the backend (inside my handler):

w.Header().Add(htmxtools.LocationResponse.String(), `{"path":"delete-status-fragment", "target":"#content-div"}`)
w.Header().Add(htmxtools.ReplaceURLResponse.String(), "status.html")
w.WriteHeader(http.StatusAccepted)

When the handler is called via an hx- request, the contents delete-status-fragment will replace the contents of the div with id content-div. However, unlike the default behaviour, the url bar will show status.html and be safe to reload while the default would show a path of delete-status-fragment which is not a valid full html page

if you feel like the headers aren't working, make sure you actually wrote them to the http response. I make this mistake ALL THE TIME

There's also a helper if you want for building the headers in a safer way:

if htmxRequest := htmxtools.RequestFromContext(r.Context()); htmxRequest != nil {
        hxheaders := &htmxtools.HTMXResponse{
			ReplaceURL: htmxRequest.CurrentURL,
            Reswap: htmxtools.SwapOuterHTML,
		}
		if err := hxheaders.AddToResponse(w); err != nil {
			return
		}
}

Middleware

http.Handle("/", htmxtools.Wrap(myhandler))

or

http.Handle("/",htmxtools.WrapFunc(myhandlerfunc))

This will detect htmx requests and inject the details into the context. You can extract the details down the line via:

func somefunc(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
    htmxrequest := htmxtools.RequestFromContext(r.Context())
    if htmxrequest == nil {
        // do something for non-htmx requests
    } else {
        // do something for htmx requests
        // note that not all fields will be populated so you'll want to check
    }
}

Examples

The following contains a few different ways to use this library

in-repo example

In the examples/middleware directory there's a small example:

go run examples/middleware/main.go

will start a small webserver on http://localhost:3000

• Loading the page will present a button, that when clicked, makes an htmx request to the backend which returns details about the htmx request:

• Clicking "drink me" will ask for input and render a response from the server:

visiting http://localhost:3000/other.html will show a similar page which doesn't go to the backend for data but passes through the middleware which injects the htmx request details in the template

• Clicking "eat me" will respond with a server-side generated htmx alert via headers:

• Visting http://localhost:3000/other.html , will render a page that operates entirely client side (with the exception of the template values that are injected by the middleware)

• clicking the button will generate an htmx request for the same file (with hx-confirm client side) but will be passed an htmx request struct via the template execution:

Building your own handler

If you wanted to, you can use the various bits to build your handler the way you want:

// responds to htmx requests with the provided template updating the provided target
// replace is the path to replace in the url bar
func hxOnlyHandler(template, target string, next http.Handler, replace string) http.HandlerFunc {
    return func(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request) {
        htmxrequest := htmxtools.RequestFromContext(r.Context())
        if htmxrequest == nil {
            next.ServeHTTP(w, r)
            return
        }
        htmxloc := fmt.Sprintf(`{"path":"%s","target":"%s"}`, template, target)
        w.Header().Add(htmxtools.LocationResponse.String(), htmxloc)
        if strings.TrimSpace(replace) != "" {
            w.Header().Add(htmxtools.ReplaceURLResponse.String(), replace)
        }
        w.WriteHeader(http.StatusAccepted)
    }
}

Templating tips

I am not a go template expert. I've tended to avoid them in the past because of the runtime implications however now that I've been working on browser content, I had to really dive back in.

Use blocks

Blocks are a REALLY REALLY nice thing in go templates. They allow you to define a template inside of another templare. Note that blocks are still rendered (unless something inside the block says not to).

tl;dr: wrap chunks of html content that you might want to reuse via htmx in a {{ block "unique-block-name" .}}blahblah{{end}} and call them by block name via hx-get (note that this requires your server to understand serving templates - example below)

Take the following template (index.html) from this repo:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
{{ block "head" . }}
<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/htmx.org@1.9.2"
        integrity="sha384-L6OqL9pRWyyFU3+/bjdSri+iIphTN/bvYyM37tICVyOJkWZLpP2vGn6VUEXgzg6h"
        crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
    <script>
        htmx.logAll();
    </script>
    <title>Middleware Demo</title>
</head>
{{ end }}

{{ block "body" . }}
<body>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        // for our post-swap alert
        document.body.addEventListener("showMessage", function (evt) {
            if (evt.detail.level === "info") {
                alert(evt.detail.message);
            }
        });
    </script>
    <div id="button-div"><button id="drink-me-button" hx-get="button-push" hx-target="#body-content"
            name="drink-me-button-name" hx-prompt="are you sure? type something to confirm">Drink me!</button>
    </div>
    <!-- set hx-swap to none so our button doesn't get replaced with empty results -->
    <div id="server-side-alert"><button id="server-side-alert" hx-get="alert" hx-swap="none">Eat me!</button>
    </div>
    <div id="body-content"></div>
</body>
{{ end }}
</html>

This is our index page and can be rendered as a whole html page as is. Now let's take a look at another file in the same directory:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/htmx.org@1.9.2"
        integrity="sha384-L6OqL9pRWyyFU3+/bjdSri+iIphTN/bvYyM37tICVyOJkWZLpP2vGn6VUEXgzg6h"
        crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
    <script>
        htmx.logAll();
    </script>
    <title>Other Page</title>
</head>

<body>
    {{ block "other" . }}
    <div id="other-content">
        {{ if not .HtmxRequest }}
        <!-- content when not htmx -->
        {{ else }}
        <!-- we're passing in the htmxrequest struct we got from the context so we can refer to its values here-->
        <!-- other content here-->
        {{ end }}
    </div>
    {{ end }}
</body>
</html>

If we wanted to, we could rewrite the above template like so:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

{{ template "head" . }}

<body>
    {{ block "other" . }}
    <div id="other-content">
        {{ if not .HtmxRequest }}
        <!-- content when not htmx -->
        {{ else }}
        <!-- we're passing in the htmxrequest struct we got from the context so we can refer to its values here-->
        <!-- other content here-->
        {{ end }}
    </div>
    {{ end }}
</body>
</html>

This is non-htmx specific mind you but it DOES open up some fun tricks with htmx. Imagine we have the following html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/htmx.org@1.9.2"
        integrity="sha384-L6OqL9pRWyyFU3+/bjdSri+iIphTN/bvYyM37tICVyOJkWZLpP2vGn6VUEXgzg6h"
        crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
    <script>
        htmx.logAll();
    </script>
    <title>Other Page</title>
</head>

<body>
    {{ block "list-items" . }}
    <table><!-- insert your table rows and such here - maybe with template placeholdrs --></table>
</body>
</html>

Now let's say we want the list-items html to be rendered somewhere else. We can do this now:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
    <script src="https://unpkg.com/htmx.org@1.9.2"
        integrity="sha384-L6OqL9pRWyyFU3+/bjdSri+iIphTN/bvYyM37tICVyOJkWZLpP2vGn6VUEXgzg6h"
        crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
    <script>
        htmx.logAll();
    </script>
    <title>Third Page</title>
</head>

<body>
    <div id="other-list-items" hx-get="list-items"></div>
</body>
</html>

The above div (other-list-items) will be replaced with the contents of the list-items block from above.

Note that doing so will, by default, update the url and location history to contain http://hostname/list-items which is NOT a valid html page and would just render the table only. To work around this, set the HX-Replace-Url header to set to a valid page or false. You can also set the attribute on the element as well via hx-replace-url

TODO

• add structs for htmx json (i.e. json passed to HX-Location)