A Reflex-Dom inspired UI library for PureScript based on Functional Reactive Programming (FRP).
Specular is a UI library for building web applications in PureScript using Functional Reactive Programming (FRP). It enables developers to create dynamic, interactive interfaces by modeling state changes and user events as reactive streams, similar to Reflex-DOM but tailored for PureScript's ecosystem.
PureScript developers building interactive web applications who prefer FRP patterns and want a lightweight, declarative alternative to virtual DOM-based libraries.
Specular offers a minimalistic FRP approach with direct DOM manipulation, resulting in smaller bundle sizes and efficient updates, making it ideal for performance-sensitive projects in PureScript.
A Reflex-Dom inspired UI library for PureScript
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Specular produces demos as small as 19K minified and gzipped, significantly lighter than GHCJS-based alternatives, making it ideal for performance-critical web applications.
It leverages FRP types like Dynamic and Event to declaratively manage state and events, translating directly to DOM operations without a virtual DOM for simplicity and efficiency.
Used by Restaumatic in production for online ordering frontends and backoffice apps, demonstrating reliability and real-world testing in commercial environments.
Offers two-way bindings via props like bindValueOnChange for seamless form input management, reducing boilerplate in interactive UIs.
The README explicitly admits there's no good way to do server-side rendering, limiting its use for SEO-heavy or initial load-sensitive projects.
Direct DOM manipulation without a virtual DOM can lead to inefficiencies; the library warns about overusing withDynamic_ for dynamic structure changes due to re-render costs.
Compared to Reflex, it has fewer combinators, and creating recursive data flows is cumbersome due to PureScript's eager evaluation and lack of RecursiveDo.
As a less popular library, it may have undiscovered bugs, lacks extensive documentation or community support, and could see breaking changes as noted for Ref API evolution.