Re: [webcomponents] Proposal for Cross Origin Use Case and Declarative Syntax

On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 6:49 PM, Arthur Barstow <art.barstow@nokia.com>wrote:

> Hi Dimitri, Dominic,
>
> Ryosuke is here in Shezhen at WebApps' f2f meeting. We would like to have
> one or both of you join us (via voice conference) on Tuesday morning to
> talk about Web Components and his comments below.
>
> Please look at the agenda page and let us know your availability for the
> one of the open slots before lunch (all times are local to Shenzhen):
>
> <http://www.w3.org/wiki/Webapps/November2013Meeting#
> Agenda_Tuesday_November_12>
>

I dropped something at 9:30am. I think that's 5:30pm Mountain View and
10:30am Tokyo, right?


>
> -Thanks, ArtB
>
>
> On 11/9/13 3:24 AM, ext Ryosuke Niwa wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> We have been discussing cross-orign use case and declarative syntax of
>> web components internally at Apple, and here are our straw man proposal to
>> amend the existing Web Components specifications to support it.
>>
>> *1. Modify HTML Imports to run scripts in the imported document itself*
>>
>> This allows the importee and the importer to not share the same script
>> context, etc…
>>
>
This could be an option and shouldn’t be the default. By running scripts in
a different context, we are ejecting the primary use case of enabling
frameworks/libraries to better manage their assets and dependencies (aka
the Bootstrap use case).

Rob Dodson’s article has a nice progression explaining the use case:
http://robdodson.me/blog/2013/08/20/exploring-html-imports/

Also, check out newly minted Eric Bidelman's article on imports (especially
the use cases section at the bottom):
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webcomponents/imports/

*Re: Custom Elements LC*, this is an issue to handle in HTML Imports
specification, not related to Custom Elements.



>> *2. Add “importcomponents" content attribute on link element*
>>
>> It defines the list of custom element tag names to be imported from the
>> imported HTML document.
>> e.g. <link rel="import" href="~" importcomponents="tag-1 tag-2"> will
>> export custom elements of tag names "tag-1" and "tag-2" from ~. Any name
>> that didn't have a definition in the import document is ignored (i.e. if
>> "tag-2" was not defined in ~, it would be skipped but "tag-1" will be still
>> imported).
>>
>> This mechanism prevents the imported document from defining arbitrary
>> components in the host document.
>>
>
*Re: Custom Elements LC*, this should be handled in HTML Imports
specification. HTML Imports can rely on Custom Elements specification. Any
additional hooks that could be needed to facilitate this feature could be
added in Custom Elements Level 2 specification.


>
>> *3. Support "static" (write-once) binding of a HTML template*
>>
>> e.g.
>> <template id=cardTemplate>Name: {{name}}<br>Email:{{email}}</template>
>> <script>
>> document.body.appendChild(cardTemplate.instantiate({name: "Ryosuke
>> Niwa", email:"rniwa@webkit.org <mailto:rniwa@webkit.org>"}));
>> </script>
>>
>
This seems very similar to the Rafael Weinstein's MDV work. You guys should
collaborate :)

*Re: Custom Elements LC*, this is unrelated to specification.


> *4. Add “interface" content attribute to template element*
>>
>> This content attribute specifies the name of the JavaScript constructor
>> function to be created in the global scope. The UA creates one and will be
>> used to instantiate a given custom element. The author can then setup the
>> prototype chain as needed:
>>
>> <template defines="name-card" interface="NameCardElement">
>> Name: {{name}}<br>Email:{{email}}
>> </template>
>> <script>
>> NameCardElement.prototype.name = function () {...}
>> NameCardElement.prototype.email = function () {...}
>> </script>
>>
>> This is similar to doing:
>> var NameCardElement = document.register(’name-card');
>>
>
This is another take on the declarative custom elements (a variant of [1]).
This particular approach has four problems that the WG was able to resolve
(at least the first three) in previous iterations:

1) It is not friendly to ES6 classes. In fact, you can't use class syntax
and this syntax together.

2) It couples templates, shadow DOM, and custom elements in a way that's
highly opinionated and inflexible. Throughout this year, we've tried many
various ways to get this right, and failed [2]. I highly recommend that we
avoid putting this into a specification now. Instead, we should let the
best practices evolve and build on the cowpaths.

3) The approach pollutes global name space with constructors. This had been
voiced many times as unacceptable by developers.

4) How does build a custom element that uses <name-card> as its base
element? What about <div> or any other HTML element?

The last one remains to be the hardest. The tortured inheritance support is
what killed <element> in the first place. We can't ignore the inheritance,
since it is clearly present, in both DOM and JS. If we attempt to punt on
supporting it, our decisions cut off the opportunities to evolve this right
in the future, and will likely leave us with boogers like multiple syntaxes
for inheritance vs. non-inheritance use cases.

I recommend studying the work the WG had already done here to avoid
stepping on the same rakes.

*Re: Custom Elements LC*, this functionality should be entirely defined as
part of <template>, relying on the Custom Elements specification. No
changes to Custom Elements specification are needed.

[1]:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2013AprJun/thread.html#msg75
[2]:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2013JulSep/thread.html#msg287

*5. Add "defines" content attribute on HTML template element to define a
>> custom element*
>>
>> This new attribute defines a custom element of the given name for the
>> template content.
>> e.g. <template defines="nestedDiv"><div><div></div></div></template>
>> will let you use <nestedDiv></nestedDiv>
>>
>> We didn’t think having a separate custom element was useful because we
>> couldn’t think of a use case where you wanted to define a custom element
>> declaratively and not use template by default, and having to associate the
>> first template element with the custom element seemed unnecessary
>> complexity.
>>
>
*Re: Custom Elements LC*, this functionality should be entirely defined as
part of <template>, relying on the Custom Elements specification. No
changes to Custom Elements specification are needed.

As an aside, there were several Polymer users who had live code that used
multiple templates and runtime logic to manage them, and various other
scenarios [1], [2], [3].

[1]: https://github.com/Polymer/polymer/issues/222
[2]: https://github.com/Polymer/polymer/issues/156
[3]: https://github.com/Polymer/polymer/issues/157


> *5.1. When a custom element is instantiated, automatically instantiate
>> template inside a shadow root after statically binding the template with
>> dataset*
>>
>> This allows statically declaring arguments to a component.
>> e.g.
>> <template defines="name-card">Name: {{name}}<br>Email:{{email}}</
>> template>
>> <name-card data-name="Ryosuke Niwa" data-email="rniwa@webkit.org <mailto:
>> rniwa@webkit.org>”>
>>
>
This is a cool idea, though coupling moustaches, templates, custom
elements, and data sets brings sadness. There are several library/framework
authors who will cry foul, since they rely on {{}} as their placeholders.
Rafael Weinstein have been working on this problem for several years now,
it might be good to work with him on something more flexible.

*Re: Custom Elements LC*, this functionality should be entirely defined as
part of <template>, relying on the Custom Elements specification. No
changes to Custom Elements specification are needed.


> *5.2. When a new custom element object is constructed, "created" callback
>> is called with a shadow root*
>>
>> Unfortunately, we can't let the author define a constructor because the
>> element hadn't been properly initialized with the right JS wrapper at the
>> time of its construction. So just like we can't do "new HTMLTitleElement",
>> we're not going to let the author do an interesting things inside a custom
>> element's constructor. Instead, we're going to call "created" function on
>> its prototype chain:
>>
>> <template defines="name-card" interface="NameCardElement">
>> Name: {{name}}<br>Email:{{email}}
>> </template>
>> <script>
>> NameCardElement.prototype.name = function () {...}
>> NameCardElement.prototype.email = function () {...}
>> NameCardElement.prototype.created = function (shadowRoot) {
>> ... // Initialize the shadowRoot here.
>> }
>> </script>
>>
>> This is similar to the way document.register works in that
>> document.register creates a constructor automatically.
>>
>
We can't assume that Shadow DOM and Custom Elements are only used together.
There is already one framework already in existence that uses Custom
Elements, but not Shadow DOM [1], and we've already travelled this path
[2], [3].

*Re: Custom Elements LC*, we should not add this argument to "created"
callback, because this will lead to coupling Custom Elements with Shadow
DOM specification. Your template proposal could easily add a new
"shadowTreeCreated" callback that is invoked with this argument. The timing
of this invocation would be specified in the respective specification
(which I think is the HTML spec, since <template> had just moved there).

[1]: http://mozilla.github.io/brick/
[2]: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-webapps/2013JanMar/0521.html
[3]: https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=18748


> *6. The cross-origin component does not have access to the shadow host
>> element, and the host document doesn’t have access to the element object.*
>>
>> When member functions of the element is called, “this” object will be
>> undefined. This is necessary because exposing the object to a cross-origin
>> content will result in tricky security issues, forcing us to have proxy
>> objects, etc…
>>
>> Inside the document that imported a component, the element doesn’t use
>> the prototype defined by the component as that exposes JS objects
>> cross-origin. e.g. even if LikeButtonElement was defined in
>> facebook.com/~/like-button.html <http://facebook.com/%7E/like-button.html>,
>> the document that uses this component wouldn’t see the prototype or the
>> constructor. It’ll be HTMLUnknownElement. (We could create a new custom
>> element type such as HTMLCrossOriginCustomElement if think that’s
>> necessary).
>>
>
I suspect that the boundary you're drawing at the custom element layer is
going to give you more trouble than it's worth. There are already notions
of proxy elements/HTMLKnownElements, which is just pure magic.

Fortunately, there is already a boundary that we built that might be just
the right fit for this problem: the shadow DOM boundary. A while back, we
had lunch with Mozilla security researchers who were interested in
harnessing the power of Shadow DOM, and Elliott (cc'd) came up with a
pretty nifty proposal called the DOMWorker. I nagged him and he is
hopefully going to post it on public-webapps. I am pretty sure that his
proposal can address your use case and not cripple the rest of the spec in
the process.

*Re: Custom Elements LC*, if still necessary, this proposal is something
that should be investigated in Level 2 of the specification, as an
additional ability of custom elements.


> *7. Expose shadow host’s dataset on shadow root*
>>
>> This allows the component to communicate with the host document in a
>> limited fashion without exposing the element directly.
>>
>> This design allows us to have an iframe-like boundary between the shadow
>> host (custom element itself) and the shadow root (implementation details),
>> and address our cross-origin use case elegantly as follows:
>>
>> rniwa.com/webkit.html <http://rniwa.com/webkit.html>
>>
>> ---------------------------------
>> <!DOCTYPE html>
>> <html>
>> <head>
>> <link rel=import href="https://webkit.org/components.html"
>> defines="share-button like-button">
>> </head>
>> <body>
>> <like-button data-url="https://build.webkit.org/">Like build.webkit.org <
>> http://build.webkit.org></like-button>
>> </body>
>> </html>
>>
>> webkit.org/components.html <http://webkit.org/components.html>
>>
>> ---------------------------------
>> <template defines="like-button" interface="LikeButtonElement">
>> <!-- implicitly does shadowRoot.appendChild(myTemplate.instantiate(shadowHost.dataset));
>> -->
>> <form ...>
>> <input type=hidden value="{{url}}">
>> <button type=submit>Like!</button>
>> </form>
>> <script>
>> LikeButtonElement.prototype.created = function (shadowRoot) {
>> shadowRoot.query('form').onsubmit = function () {
>> // ...
>> }
>> }
>> </script>
>> </template>
>>
>
*Re: Custom Elements LC*, this seems like something that would be part of
the Shadow DOM specification.

All in all, I sympathize with the use case and applaud the effort and
attention, but we should be careful not to discard our abilities to address
the use cases we are already solving. We live in an over-constrained world
:)

:DG<