htmx

htmx is a JavaScript library for enhancing existing HTML elements with "hypermedia controls", which effectively allows any element to make requests (like a <form> or <a> natively can) and update the page with HTML as needed.

You can see a complete hybrid project example in this demonstration repo.

Installation

As with most libraries, just install htmx.org as a dependency using your favorite package manager:

npm i htmx.org

Example

As a basic example, let's create a <form> in the client side that can send a request to an API route as FormData, which sends an HTML response back.

Frontend

First we'll create our frontend including htmx in a <script> tag and adding a <form> to the page:

<!-- src/pages/index.html -->
<html>
  <head>
    <script src="/node_modules/htmx.org/dist/htmx.js"></script>
  </head>

  <body>
    <form hx-post="/api/greeting" hx-target="#greeting-output">
      <label>
        <input type="text" name="name" placeholder="your name..." required />
      </label>
      <button type="submit">Click me for a greeting!</button>
    </form>

    <h2 id="greeting-output"></h2>
  </body>
</html>

Backend

Now let's add our API endpoint:

// src/pages/api/greeting.js
export async function handler(request) {
  const formData = await request.formData();
  const name = formData.has("name") ? formData.get("name") : "Greenwood";
  const body = `Hello ${name}! 👋`;

  return new Response(body, {
    headers: new Headers({
      "Content-Type": "text/html",
    }),
  });
}

Now when the form is submitted, htmx will make a request to our backend API and output the returned HTML to the page. 🎯

Edit on GitHub

Getting Started

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