Bobrov Dev
Please... no more jQuery...

Please... no more jQuery...

jQuery was our buddy for a long time, and it helped developers around the world to solve browser incompatibility issues in old dark times. But everything changes and JavaScript incredibly changed compared to 2006. Browser vendors involved in specification improvements and followed it and gave devs ability to try experimental platform features. Why might you not need jQuery in 2017?

jQuery is a handy library that provides simple API for DOM manipulations, AJAX, animations and a lot more. Also, it solves all edges of old browsers incompatibility, if you know what does it mean to support IE8, you understand what I mean. But why you should use it now, when all these tasks can be solved with vanilla JS and CSS? For example, the size of the minified version of jQuery 3 (latest major version now) is more than 80KB! That means that without any line of your code, you want to charge end users for additional traffic. I’ll try to discover common jQuery use-cases (according to my experience) and how to do the same things without it.

Elements selection

The first thing that people learn about jQuery is its simple document elements selection. It is available with jQuery or usually used $ alias function:

const $myElement = $('#my-element');
const $collection = $('.collection');

Nowadays it is easy to achieve with native querySelector and querySelectorAll methods. You can pass any valid CSS selector string to them:

const myElement = document.querySelector('#my-element');
const collection = document.querySelectorAll('.collection');

// Faster more specific methods.
const myElement = document.getElementById('my-element');
const collection = document.getElementsByClassName('collection');

As you can see querySelector and querySelectorAll are universal methods, but sometimes it is better to use specific methods like getElementById to be more performant. Anyway querySelectorAll implemented natively in browser compared to jQuery analog, and it’ll be faster, because not includes if statements.

Elements iteration

The main difference is that jQuery returns the custom array-like object with a bunch of its specific properties on it. And native selection methods returns NodeList – array-like (includes length property) object.

It is common task to iterate though elements collection to do some manipulations. Here is jQuery-way:

$('.collection').each(item => {
  // Do some stuff with item.
});

NodeList doesn’t support and Array methods, but you can iterate over it with simple for/while loop, using Array.prototype, convert it to array:

const collection = document.querySelectorAll('.collection');

// For loop.
for (let i = 0; i < collection.length; i++) {
   // Do some stuff with collection[i].
}

// Array method from the prototype.
Array.prototype.forEach.call(collection, item => {
  // Do some stuff with item.
});

// Convert to array.
// 1. Array.from.
const collectionArray = Array.from(collection);

// 2. Spread operator.
const collectionArray2 = [...collection];

// For of loop.
for (let item of collection) {
  // Do some stuff with item.
}

First two methods (for loop and forEach) works starting from IE9. If you don’t support such old browsers you can use new for of loop to convert NodeList to an array with Array.from the static method as well as with spread operator.

Elemets attributes/properties

jQuery has few methods to change node class name, set attributes, styles, text content. It may look like this:

const $link = $('a');

$link.addClass('fancy')
  .attr('target', '_blank')
  .css('color', 'red')
  .text('Press Me!')
  .data('my-value', 'someval');

The same is simple to do with just a few lines of vanilla JavaScript, but without method chaining:

const link = document.querySelector('a');

link.classList.add('fancy');
link.target = '_blank';
link.style.color = 'red';
link.textContent = 'Press Me!';
link.dateSet.myValue = 'someval';

And no library needed for such things 😃

Event listeners

The event is the primary “drive” of JavaScript, and they helped to survive in the asynchronous world. jQuery provides set of methods to add/remove listeners on DOM nodes, starting from general on and off, ending more specific like click, mousemove, etc.

const $menuItems = $('nav > a');
const myHandler = event => console.log(event.target);

$menuItems.click(myHandler);

$menuItems.off('click', myHandler);

But in general they are only wrappers on top of native methods:

const menuItems = document.querySelectorAll('nav > a');
const myHandler = event => console.log(event.target);

// Non-optimal way.
for (let link in menuItems) {
  link.addEventListener('click', myHandler, false);

  link.removeEventListener('click', myHandler);
}

// Better way with event delegation.
const menu = document.querySelector('nav');

const rootHandler = event => {
  if (event.target.tagName !== 'A') {
    return;
  }

  // Do stuff with links.
};

menu.addEventListener('click', rootHandler, false);

menu.removeEventListener('click', rootHandler);

As you can see it might require some additional logic to use optimal “event delegation” way, but allow you to pass other options to the event listener. It may be good to have for example when you add a listener to window scroll event. On mobile devices, if you add empty function as a handler for scroll it downgrades scrolling performance. But modern browsers support passive listeners, that could be enabled by passing passive: true parameter to the listener in options object (more info).

Show or hide element

jQuery’s show and hide methods just adds block and none value to elements display style.

$('.to-hide').hide();

$('.to-show').show();

$('.to-toggle').toggle();

But the better decision is to use CSS for this, and you could support other display values:

.flexbox {
  display: flex;
}

.flexbox_hidden {
  display: none;
}

They you can just toggle flexbox_hidden class name to show/hide element:

const flexbox = document.querySelector('.flexbox');

// Hide.
flexbox.classList.add('flexbox_hidden');

// Show.
flexbox.classList.remove('flexbox_hidden');

// Toggle.
flexbox.classList.toggle('flexbox_hidden');

There are another technics to hide node with CSS, and the choice depends on context (accessibility, hide with animation).

Animations

Web animations don’t wonder anybody in the modern web, and it is must have feature f user experience. jQuery gives us simple API to handle animations, but CSS has extremely grown its powers and give us the ability to create complex performant animations and transitions. A simple fade in/out element animation with jQuery:

$('.fading-box').fadeIn(500);

$('.fading-box').fadeOut(500);

For such simple action CSS is a much better choice, and what is more important it will be more performant:

/* transitions way */
.fading-box {
  opacity: 0;
  transition opacity .5s linear;
}

.fading-box:hover {
  opacity: 1;
}

/* keyframes way */
@keyframes fade {
  from {
    opacity: 0;
  }

  to {
    opacity: 1;
  }
}

.fading-box {
  animation: .5s fade;
}

.fading-box_out {
  animation: .5s fade reverse;
}

As you can see, transitions could be used for simple property change, and keyframes can keep more complex animations. But CSS animations have one limitation, they are predefined and can’t be generated or changed at runtime (it is possible with CSS variables, but support is not suitable for now). If you need something dynamic, you might use Animations API or some animation library like VelocityJS.

AJAX

Some people argue that they use jQuery to not only manipulate DOM but because it provides the simple method to operate with AJAX requests. Yes, old XMLHttpRequest has API that was hard to maintain, but now we have great promise-based Fetch API. It’s better to show the code than explain with words:

// jQuery ajax.
$.ajax('some/remote/endpoint')
  .done(() => console.log('success'))
  .fail(() => console.log('error'));

// Fetch API.
fetch('some/remote/endpoint')
  .then(() => console.log('success'))
  .catch(() => console.log('error'));

Native code do the same thing as jQuery using new features, like Promise. If you are using some JavaScript framework like Angular they have own implementation for HTTP requests.

Libraries and Plugins

Many developers don’t see an alternative to using jQuery because for a long time its existence a vast amount of plugins have been written. Some role in this situation also played front-end frameworks like Bootstrap that required jQuery for such components as modal windows, accordions, etc. But from my research, a lot of jQuery plugins haven’t been maintained for a long time, used old technics to support old browsers or could be replaced entirely with a feature from last JS/CSS specifications.

For example, mobile navigation drawer could be implemented with CSS only, the JavaScript needed for additional featured like a11y. Simple sliders, accordions, tabs could also be applied with styles, and the only disadvantage is that it may require extra markup.

Web Components are coming, the specification is supported in most of the modern browsers, and I believe that all plugins will be replaced with custom elements in the future.

Helpful resources

  1. You Don’t Need jQuery - jQuery features in vanilla JS examples.
  2. You Might Not Need jQuery - native DOM manipulation examples.
  3. MDN JavaScript Documentation
  4. The Vanilla Javascript Repository - curated list of vanille JS libraries and plugins
  5. Custom Elements - web components catalog.
  6. Polymer Elements - list of web components created by Polymer team.