Ask HN: JavaScript Framework to use with pre-existing HTML

I have a project that allows users to enter an arbitrary URL and make simple modifications to the HTML structure.

Right now I am doing this all by hand using ES6 but it's starting to get a bit unwieldy.

React, Vue.js, Angular etc are primarily focused on generating a complete project, HTML JS and CSS that can be used as an application.

I want to just add some functionality to existing arbitrary HTML, but I'd like to do it in a somewhat modern fashion (things like backbone are at least somewhat better suited to this, but way out of fashion).

It seems like Vue might be my best bet but I just wanted to see if anyone else had any suggestions.

3 comments

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verdverm 6y ago ↗

Vue

Porthos9K 6y ago ↗

What's wrong with jQuery? It might be old and busted, but people have been testing and debugging it for years. As JS frameworks go, I've found that it's the best of a bad lot since you can use what you need with existing markup and CSS instead of having to rebuild to accommodate the framework.

masterofmisc 6y ago ↗

Not sure if it fits your use-case, but if you just want to just throw a couple of react classes on your page, without having to go through all the hassle of setting up a react app (without NPM or WebPack), you could just live transpile react using babel-standalone.

https://babeljs.io/docs/en/babel-standalone

Apparently sites like JSFiddle use babel standalone for live compilation.

Here is a GitHub Gist example: https://gist.github.com/OceanAirdrop/52b2042da21ef52ac5ead0e...

Just remember to wrap your script tags with the "text/babel" type