IN DEVELOPMENT

@heymp/signals 🚦

Minimal signals like library built with powerful browser features; EventTarget and AsyncIterators.

Usage example

import { Signal } from '@heymp/signals';

const count = new Signal.State(0);
const isDone = new Signal.Computed(() => count.value > 3, [count]);

setInterval(() => {
  count.value++;
}, 1000)

for await (const value of isDone) {
  console.log('Counter is done:', value);
}

EventTarget

Signals are based on the EventTarget interface. This means you can listen to the update event emitted from that signal.

const count = new Signal.State(0);
count.addEventListener('update', () => {
  console.log('Count updated:', count.value);
});

AsyncIterator

Signals also contain a @@asyncIterator. Async iterables are objects with a [Symbol.asyncIterator] method, which returns an iterator who's next() method returns a Promise. This allows you to use the for await...of syntax to listen to the signal.

NOTE: Using an async iterator in a for await...of loop will block the event loop until the signal is done emitting values.

const count = new Signal.State(0);
for await (const value of count) {
  console.log('Count updated:', value);
}

Lit

The cool thing about using AsyncIterators is that frameworks can expose methods for re-rendering components when new values are yielded.

For instance, Lit exposes asyncReplace and asyncAppend directives to easily render new values from an async iterable.

import { LitElement, html } from 'lit'
import { asyncReplace } from 'lit/directives/async-replace.js'

export class MyElement extends LitElement {
  render() {
    return html`
      <button @click=${() => store.counter.value++}>
        count is ${asyncReplace(store.counter)}
      </button>
    `;
  }
}

Signals Standard

There has been some awesome work done by Rob Eisenberg and library authors to propose Signals as a new TC39 standard. I highly recommend reading this article to learn more about this initiative.

Should I use this library?

This is mostly a proof of concept but we do use this pattern for some of our internal projects. There are known issues with EventTarget if there are thousands of EventTarget instances.

I would recommend looking at the Signal Polyfill as an alternative.