css-layout

This project implements a subset of CSS including flexbox and the box model using pure JavaScript, then transpiled to C and Java. The goal is to have a small standalone library to layout elements. It doesn't rely on the DOM at all.

In order to make sure that the code is correct, it is developed in JavaScript using TDD where each commit adds a unit test and the associated code to make it work. All the unit tests are tested against Chrome's implementation of CSS.

The JavaScript version has been implemented in a way that can be easily transpiled to C and Java via regexes. The layout function doesn't do any allocation nor uses any of the dynamic aspect of JavaScript. The tests are also transpiled to make sure that the implementations are correct everywhere.

Usage

A single function computeLayout is exposed and

• takes a tree of nodes: { style: { ... }, children: [ nodes ] }
• returns a tree of rectangles: { width: ..., height: ..., top: ..., left: ..., children: [ rects ] }

For example,

computeLayout(
  {style: {padding: 50}, children: [
    {style: {padding: 10, alignSelf: 'stretch'}}
  ]}
);
// =>
{width: 120, height: 120, top: 0, left: 0, children: [
  {width: 20, height: 20, top: 50, left: 50}
]}

To run the tests

• For the JS tests: Open RunLayoutTests.html and RunLayoutRandomTests.html in Chrome or run $ npm test
• For the C and Java tests: run make in your terminal. It will also transpile the JS code

Supported Attributes

Name	Value
width, height	positive number
left, right, top, bottom	number
margin, marginLeft, marginRight, marginTop, marginBottom	number
padding, paddingLeft, paddingRight, paddingTop, paddingBottom	positive number
borderWidth, borderLeftWidth, borderRightWidth, borderTopWidth, borderBottomWidth	positive number
flexDirection	'column', 'row'
justifyContent	'flex-start', 'center', 'flex-end', 'space-between', 'space-around'
alignItems, alignSelf	'flex-start', 'center', 'flex-end', 'stretch'
flex	positive number
flexWrap	'wrap', 'nowrap'
position	'relative', 'absolute'

• inherit value is not implemented because it's a way to disambiguate between multiple colliding rules. This should be done in a pre-processing step, not in the actual layout algorithm.

Default values

Since we are only using flexbox, we can use defaults that are much more sensible. This is the configuration to use in order to get the same behavior using the DOM and CSS. You can try those default settings with the following JSFiddle.

div, span {
  box-sizing: border-box;
  position: relative;

  display: flex;
  flex-direction: column;
  align-items: stretch;
  flex-shrink: 0;

  border: 0 solid black;
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
}

• box-sizing: border-box is the most convenient way to express the relation between width and borderWidth.
• Everything is display: flex by default. All the behaviors of block and inline-block can be expressed in term of flex but not the opposite.
• All the flex elements are oriented from top to bottom, left to right and do not shrink. This is how things are laid out using the default CSS settings and what you'd expect.
• Everything is position: relative. This makes position: absolute target the direct parent and not some parent which is either relative or absolute. If you want to position an element relative to something else, you should move it in the DOM instead of relying of CSS. It also makes top, left, right, bottom do something when not specifying position: absolute.