Web Development with Web Components: The New Way of Modularity
Tags: javascript, webcomponents, litelement, webdev
Published: 2024-04-22 17:42:00

**Web Components** is a web technology that forms the basis of modern web development practices and allows to create repetitive elements on web pages in a reusable and modular way. This technology enables web developers to create more efficient, maintainable and modular code.

## Fundamentals of Web Components

We can examine web components under 4 headings in terms of features:

1. **Custom Elements:**
 Allows to create new custom tags with HTML. These custom tags come with their own functionality and appearance. For example, <my-button> or <custom-video>.
2. **Shadow DOM:**
 This is a technology that isolates the content and styles of a component from other page content. Thus, the content and style of a component can be managed internally without affecting the outside world.
3. **HTML Templates:**
 This is used to define repeating structures. Templates can be used inside a component and are only called when needed.
4. **ECMAScript Modules:**
 allows JavaScript files to be organized in a modular way and exported to other files. This allows for better code organization and reusability.

## Advantages of Web Components

![https://giphy.com/gifs/reaction-mrw-11ISwbgCxEzMyY
](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/v89gt39vbpo7gxwwxuol.png)

Web components offer many advantages over traditional web development methods:

- **Modularity and Reusability:**
 Components are built as independent units and can be reused at will. This ensures less code duplication and speeds up the development process.
- **Isolation:** Shadow DOM isolates the content and styles of a component from outside influences. This avoids conflicts and prevents the component from being affected by unwanted changes.
- **Standardization:** Web components provide consistency across browsers. This reduces problems with compatibility between different browsers.
- **Ease of Development:** Web components make it easier to manage the development process by breaking down the code. Each component can be developed independently.

## Disadvantages

![https://giphy.com/gifs/spongebob-squarepants-alone-lonely-ISOckXUybVfQ4
](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/fyrnppffjnnuux41w66t.png)

While web components are a big step forward in many aspects of modern web development, they can also present some disadvantages. However, these challenges should be recognized as problems that can be overcome with proper planning, design and implementation:

- **Browser Support Issues:** Full support of web components can be problematic for older browsers or certain platforms. In particular, older browsers such as Internet Explorer may struggle to run some web components properly.
- **Performance Cost:** Web components can include more complex structures and features, which can come at a performance cost. Performance issues can arise, especially in large web applications with a large number of complex components.
- **Increased Learning Curve:** Web components are based on a different paradigm than traditional web development approaches. Therefore, developers may need to learn to work with web components and restructure their applications accordingly.
- **Complexity and Abstraction:** Web components allow code to be more modular and reusable, but this modularity and reusability can, in some cases, result in code that is more complex and difficult to understand.
- **SEO Challenges:** Because some web components dynamically generate content, they can be difficult to index and be indexed by search engines. This can affect the SEO performance of websites.
- **Development Tools Support:** Web components may not be fully supported by development tools and IDEs. This can complicate the development process and complicate the debugging process.
Update and Maintenance Challenges: With a large number of web components

## Usage Areas of Web Components


![https://giphy.com/gifs/time-invention-piece-UoSB2p9tjDOpi](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/vthitbzo7uxl35dk32pl.png)

Web components have a wide range of uses and can be used in various scenarios:

- **UI Components:** UI elements such as buttons, forms, menus can be created and reused as components.
- **Widgets:** Small widgets such as calendars, maps, social media sharing buttons can be packaged as web components and easily integrated.
- **Application Development:** Large web applications can be built by combining different components together. This increases the modularity of the application and makes it easier to maintain.

Let’s see how web components work by doing a simple example.
In the example, we will create a simple button component, which when clicked will display the message “button clicked”.

```js
class CustomButton extends HTMLElement {
    constructor() {
        super();
        // Attach shadow DOM
        this.attachShadow({
            mode: 'open'
        });

        // Add click event listener
        this.addEventListener('click', this.handleClick.bind(this));
    }

    // Handle click event
    handleClick() {
        alert('Button clicked!');
    }

    connectedCallback() {
        // create the component to render
        this.shadowRoot.innerHTML = `
     <style>
      .custom-button {
       padding: 10px 20px;
       background-color: #007bff;
       color: #fff;
       border: none;
       border-radius: 5px;
        cursor: pointer;
      }
      .custom-button:hover {
       background-color: #0056b3;
       }
      </style>
    <button class="custom-button"><slot></slot></button>`;
    }
}
// component is defined
customElements.define('custom-button', CustomButton);
```

```html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  <title>Button Component</title>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Button Component</h1>
  <custom-button>Click!</custom-button>
  <script src="button.js"></script>
</body>
</html>
```
You can access the live example from [this link](https://jsfiddle.net/melihsahin/6w7gdx4s/).

## Libraries related to web components
There are several popular libraries that facilitate the use of web components. Here are some of them:

- **Polymer:** A library developed by Google that makes it easy to create, share and use web components. Polymer is especially popular for creating components that follow design guidelines such as Material Design.
- **LitElement:** A lightweight and performance-oriented version of Polymer, LitElement enables the creation of modern web components. LitElement is based on the standard Web Component API and facilitates the creation of components using JavaScript template literals.
- **Stencil:** Stencil, a library developed by Ionic, enables the creation of fast, performant and SEO-friendly web components. Stencil can be used with frameworks such as Angular, React or Vue.
- **SkateJS:** is a JavaScript framework for the creation of user interface components. SkateJS focuses on the use of Vanilla JavaScript and is easy to integrate with other frameworks.
- **Vue.js:** is a JavaScript framework that is especially popular for modern web applications. Vue.js has a component-based architecture and Vue components can be built in accordance with the Web Component standard.
- **React:** one of the most popular libraries of recent times, it is a JavaScript library developed by Facebook and is used for the creation of user interface components. Although React components do not conform to the Web Component standard, components created with React can be used with other Web Component components.

> These libraries facilitate the creation, management and use of web components and offer a variety of approaches to suit different requirements and preferences. Which library to use may vary depending on the needs of the project, the ecosystem and developer preferences.

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## Sources:
- [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_components](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_components?source=post_page-----19c682efd3a7--------------------------------)
- [https://www.webcomponents.org](https://www.webcomponents.org/?source=post_page-----19c682efd3a7--------------------------------)
- [https://javascript.info/web-components](https://javascript.info/web-components?source=post_page-----19c682efd3a7--------------------------------)