What is OpenUI?
OpenUI is a specification for standardizing UI components across different libraries and frameworks. It promotes interoperability and consistent user experiences by defining common properties and behaviors for UI elements.
Sample OpenUI Specs
Toggle between different UI libraries to see how OpenUI standardizes their component specifications:
name: "@shadcn/ui"
version: "0.1.0"
description: "Beautifully designed components built with Radix UI and Tailwind CSS."
homepage: "https://ui.shadcn.com"
author: "shadcn"
license: "MIT"
components:
Button:
description: "A clickable button component."
props:
variant:
description: "The visual style of the button."
type: string
enum:
["default", "destructive", "outline", "secondary", "ghost", "link"]
size:
description: "The size of the button."
type: string
enum: ["default", "sm", "lg", "icon"]
asChild:
description: "Change the default rendered element for the one passed as a child."
type: boolean
Input:
description: "An input field for user text entry."
props:
type:
description: "The type of the input field."
type: string
enum: ["text", "password", "email", "number", "search", "tel", "url"]
placeholder:
description: "Placeholder text for the input."
type: string
disabled:
description: "Whether the input is disabled."
type: boolean
Goals of OpenUI
- 1.Standardize UI component libraries
- 2.Interoperability across frameworks
- 3.Built-in accessibility and validation
- 4.Support web and native platforms
- 5.Doc + test + code generation
Introduction to OpenUI
OpenUI is a specification format for defining User Interface (UI) components in an abstract, implementation-agnostic manner. Inspired by specifications like OpenAPI, OpenUI describes UI components, their properties, and behaviors in a way that can be used across various UI libraries and frameworks.
With OpenUI, developers can define a UI library's components and props without enforcing a specific implementation, making it easier to standardize and document UIs for any project.
Overview
OpenUI enables developers and designers to document the structure of UI libraries in a machine-readable format. By defining the components and their props, OpenUI provides a universal language for UI design, similar to how OpenAPI standardizes the description of REST APIs.
Why OpenUI?
- Consistency: OpenUI ensures that UI components are described uniformly across various libraries, reducing confusion and improving communication between developers.
- Framework Agnostic: Whether you're using React, Vue, or Angular, OpenUI abstracts the components, making it easy to understand and port them between frameworks.
- Standardization: This specification promotes standardization in UI libraries, helping developers create better documentation and design systems.
Specification Structure
An OpenUI specification is written in either YAML or JSON. It describes UI components, their properties (props), and optional behaviors or events. Each component is defined by:
- Description: A brief overview of the component's purpose.
- Props: The configurable properties for the component, including the prop type, description, and optional enums (if the property accepts a limited set of values).
- Optional Events: Actions that can be triggered by the component (e.g., onClick).
Best Practices
- Use Descriptive Names: Clearly describe each component and prop.
- Enum Where Possible: Use enums to limit possible values for props when necessary.
- Event Descriptions: If a component has user-triggered events (e.g., onClick), ensure they are clearly documented with event names and descriptions.
- Maintain Consistency: Ensure that all component descriptions and prop definitions follow the same structure.
Future Plans
- Add support for describing component state changes and lifecycle events.
- Introduce tooling to automatically generate code from OpenUI specifications.
- Build integrations with popular component libraries and frameworks.
- Expand OpenUI to support complex UI patterns, such as modal dialogs, forms, and dynamic content loading.