[RRFC] Add first-class support for observables/signals in lit-html

[willmartian]

• I searched for an existing RRFC which might be relevant to my RRFC

Motivation

Given the prevalence of subscribable reactive primitives in front-end development (such as RxJS Observables and Preact Signals), it would be win for developer experience and interop if lit-html supported binding to them directly without needing to use a custom Async Directive.

Example

These examples are live here.

RxJS

import { interval } from 'rxjs';
 
html`<div>${inverval(1000)}</div>`

Preact Signals

import { signal } from '@preact/signals-core';
 
const count$ = signal(0);
html`<input type="button" value=${count$} @click=${() => count$.value += 1}>`

How

The above examples use a naive implementation found here: https://github.com/willmartian/lit-signals

It works by utilizing an ObserveDirective, identical to the example in the Async Directive docs.

Any subscribable objects are automatically wrapped in the directive:

import { html as _html } from "lit-html";
import { observe } from "./ObserveDirective";
 
export const html = (strings: TemplateStringsArray, ...values: unknown[]) => {
   return _html(strings, ...values.map(
       val => isSubscribable(val) ? observe(val) : val)
   );
}
 
const isSubscribable = (value: any): value is Subscribable<unknown> => {
   return 'subscribe' in value && typeof value.subscribe === 'function';
}

I am sure there is a more nuanced way to actually implement this, but my assumption is that this is a fairly light weight addition.

Current Behavior

The current behavior requires the developer to wrap wrap any subscribable values in a custom Async Directive.

html`<div>${observe(observable)}</div>`

Desired Behavior

html`<div>${observable}</div>`

References

• n/a

[JosefJezek]

FYI

• https://github.com/WebReflection/usignal
• https://github.com/nanostores/lit
• https://docs.astro.build/en/core-concepts/sharing-state/

[augustjk]

The @lit-labs/preact-signals package has since been published which includes an html tag function that auto wraps signals with directives.

[klauss194]

What about observables ?