DEV Community

Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

Posted on

htmx Has a Free Library for Dynamic HTML — Build Interactive UIs Without JavaScript Frameworks

#javascript #webdev #opensource #html

A developer needed a dynamic search with autocomplete. Installing React, setting up a build system, and writing 500 lines of code for one feature felt absurd.

htmx is a free library that lets any HTML element make HTTP requests and update the DOM. No build step, no virtual DOM, no JavaScript framework. Just HTML attributes.

What htmx Offers for Free

  • HTML Attributes - Add interactivity with hx-get, hx-post, hx-swap
  • No Build Step - One script tag, done
  • Any Backend - Works with Django, Rails, Go, PHP, anything that returns HTML
  • WebSocket - Real-time updates via WebSocket extension
  • SSE - Server-Sent Events support
  • CSS Transitions - Smooth transitions on content swap
  • Tiny - 14KB minified and gzipped
  • Progressive Enhancement - Works without JavaScript (forms still submit)

Quick Start 

<script src="https://unpkg.com/htmx.org"></script>

<!-- Click button, load content from server, swap into div -->
<button hx-get="/api/users" hx-target="#results">Load Users</button>
<div id="results"></div>

<!-- Search with debounce -->
<input hx-get="/api/search" hx-trigger="keyup changed delay:300ms" hx-target="#results" name="q">
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

GitHub: bigskysoftware/htmx - 42K+ stars

Need to monitor and scrape data from multiple web services automatically? I build custom scraping solutions. Check out my web scraping toolkit or email me at spinov001@gmail.com for a tailored solution.

Top comments (0)