Shadow mode

[filipbech]

I was thinking that maybe we should make the shadowRoot optional all together?
and maybe make the shadow-mode configurable (open/closed)?

[kenchris]

Sure why not, how would this look?

[filipbech]

I was hoping you had an opinion about that :-D Something like withProperties would be the obvious choice but we shouldn't really stick more on that - I don't think so.

Or maybe we should use more of a mixin-pattern? or have two seperate lit-element's that both enherits from a lit-base-element'ish..

do you see other ideas?

[kenchris]

I tried doing mixins.... but doing a JS mixin from TypeScript is apparently impossible... spent quite some time on this and found out that a lot of clever people had spent an equal amount of time and given up :-(

[emolr]

Hi, I've been playing around with web components quite a lot.
I have been trying an approach where i'll wait with creating shadow until the initial render in invalidate();

So it looks like this:

  async invalidate() {
    if (!this._needsRender) {
      this._needsRender = true;
      this._needsRender = await false;
      
      if (!this._hasValidated && this._shadow) {
        this._root = this.attachShadow({ mode: this._shadowMode });
      }

      this.renderer();
      this._hasValidated = true;
    }
  }

I found this as the only solution if i didn't make my base class into a mixin where i could check if (super.shadow) etc...

I'm not 100% sure on performance impact, but so far it seems good, but i'd like to hear if it's a bad idea, and why if so :)

@kenchris Btw, great work on this project! I've used it as a great inspiration for creating my own library which is similar, but has optional renderers like preact or lit-html :)

[kenchris]

Why not just check if this.shadowRoot exists? You also shouldn't need this._root.

I don't really see a problem with creating the root at this point as it should be a fast operation.

[emolr]

@kenchris Thanks for the idea of checking if shadowRoot exists, it works flawlessly 👍
And thanks for feedback on the idea :)

[ernsheong]

This is how PolymerLab's lit-element is doing it:
https://github.com/PolymerLabs/lit-element/pull/19/files

To turn off shadow DOM:

// Override _createRoot
_createRoot() {
  return this;
}