Chapter 1: Static Components

Asteracea, unlike for example React, does not have multiple ways to define a component depending on whether you'd like to use instance state or not¹. Instead, due to low syntactic overhead and Rust's efficiency, struct components are generated throughout.

Stateless struct components have zero runtime overhead compared to functions equivalent fragment! use. This, along with less boilerplate and for consistency, is why I generally recommend component! for all reusable GUI elements.

In this chapter, I will introduce the basics of generating various virtual DOM nodes in Asteracea, which can then be translated into (e.g.!) HTML or browser DOM elements.

¹ The distinction has weakened in React recently. Asteracea's approach to stateful components is partially inspired by React's Hooks in terms of UX, but is implemented very differently below the surface.