The right JavaScript libraries can take a lot of stress out of web development. Lots of the everyday coding tasks you'll have to take on as a developer have already been tackled and made available as libraries, so why reinvent the wheel?
10 of the most essential JavaScript libraries that'll help you solve commonly-faced coding issues and save you untold time and effort.
let's get started 👇
1. Math.js
While the JavaScript language standard does contain quite a few mathematical functions, it — of course — is in no way complete.
One feature which is commonly missed involves complex numbers. Math.JS provides a relatively easy-to-use API whose basic usage looks like this:
const a = math.complex(2, 3)
print(a.re) 2
print(a.im) 3
Floating number accuracy is another topic in JavaScript runtimes. Math.JS solves this problem by providing a fixed-point floating number implementation — simply set the desired precision, and raise your decimal number:
math.bignumber('2.3e+500') BigNumber, 2.3e+500
Keep in mind that BigNumber and its various classes are not a panacea cure for all digital problems. Fixed point arithmetic is known to be a lot slower than hardware-accelerated float maths —if you don't have a good reason to use higher accuracy, better make does without it.
2. Leaflet
If you manage to get your hands onto a tile source, you quickly find out that having map tiles is but half a month's rent. The leaflet provides a relatively comprehensive tile rendering infrastructure, which takes care of bringing them on-screen in a flexible fashion.
3. Hotkeys
Providing a keyboard-driven interface endears products to power users. Hotkeys take care of the often-fussy details of keyboard management, leaving you to focus on realizing the business logic. Getting started requires less than ten lines of code!
4. AutoNumeric
Making numbers look good across locales is difficult. AutoNumeric is a library dedicated to the number of formats and currencies of the world. Simply pass in a numeric variable, and feast your eyes on a string. The library can also "monitor" text fields to make them look better.
5. Element
JavaScript GUI stacks are dime a dozen. Element differs from the rest of the field by being sponsored by various large web companies based both in China and the US.
From a technical point of view, Element is — by and large — a well-supported collection of GUI widgets based on Vue 2.0. Import it to your web project, add the specific tabs, and "hack away" as if it were jQuery UI.
One area where the product really shines involves displaying date and time pickers. The following snippet creates a set of controls which let the user specify a span of months:
<el-date-picker
v-model="value1"
type="monthrange"
range-separator="To"
start-placeholder="Start month"
end-placeholder="End month">
</el-date-picker>
Sadly, getting started with Element requires a bit of handiwork. The most comfortable way involves downloading the starter kit and running it inside of a Node.JS environment.
6. Underscore.js
While libraries such as jQuery are popular, they do add significant amounts of code to your product. Underscore.js provides a small and well-curated selection of APIs, making it an ideal choice for web projects where space is at a premium.
7. Bideo.js
Purists might see a full-screen video as the most decadent and useless of backgrounds. Some designs, however, do benefit greatly from it – in that case, use Bideo.js to take the stress out of video handling.
8. D3.js
D3 creates data bindings between arbitrary DOM objects and elements stored in the code behind. This means that the look of the website can be customized flexibly independent of stored data.
D3 differs from traditional diagramming libraries in that it does not provide any templates. If you, for example, seek to create a pie chart, better start out by bringing in rectangles and adding data bindings to compute height et al.
The library shines whenever extremely complex and/or animated visualizations are required and the setup time is not an issue. One popular example would be choropleth maps, commonly used in election reporting. This, of course, is a tiny overview — further tutorials can be found here.
9. Anime.js
Anime.JS provides a comfortable-to-use implementation of the keyframe animation pattern. Specify the start state, the end state, and an easing function — library and browser will use CSS transforms to ensure that your animations are run with optimal speed.
10. Easy Toggle State
Enabling and disabling GUI elements programmatically is an old, yet recurring task. Easy Toggle State provides a neat way around the never-ending task — group elements together, and switch them on and off without breaking a sweat.
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I recently started blogging on theankurtyagi.com where I create free content for the community. This article is from there, you should check it out.
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