News

Salesforce Open Sources Lightning Web Components JavaScript Framework

• By David Ramel
• May 31, 2019

CRM specialist Salesforce has open sourced a JavaScript-based Web development framework based on the new breed of standards that have transformed the Web stack in the past five years.

Called the Lightning Web Components framework, the new community donation is part of the company's proprietary Lightning Web Components (part of the overall Lightning Platform) offering, which also includes Base Lightning Components (UI components) and Salesforce Bindings (specialized services).

As a separate entity, the Lightning Web Components framework won't have any proprietary dependencies, allowing developers to use it on any platform (such as Heroku, Google or others) using any tools and open languages they choose (such as Webpack, TypeScript, Babel and more).

The framework leverages modern Web standards introduced in the past five years by a variety of standards bodies, including:

• Recent versions of ECMAScript (6, 7, 8, 9 and later)
• Web Components
• Custom elements
• Templates and slots
• Shadow DOM
• Decorators
• Modules and more.

"In the past, developers often had to use different frameworks to build different sides of an application," Salesforce said in a May 29 blog post. "For example, you'd use Aura to build the employee-facing side of an application on Salesforce and React, Angular or Vue to build the customer engagement side of the application on Heroku or any other platform. Today, you can use Lightning Web Components to build both sides of the application. The benefits are significant: you only need to learn a single framework and you can share code between apps. And because Lightning Web Components is built on the latest Web standards, you know you are using a cutting-edge framework based on the latest patterns and best practices."

The project is parked on GitHub under an MIT license.

Open sourcing the project provides several different benefits related to the project itself, the open source community and the Web standards effort, Salesforce said.

"With Lightning Web Components now open source, developers everywhere can code with the same standards-based framework to build applications on any platform, using the tools and open languages of their choice," the company said in a news release. "They can explore the source code of Lightning Web Components -- including, for example, the enterprise-ready code for compatibility across different Web browsers -- and customize it based on their unique needs. And most important, this will foster a community of enterprise JavaScript developers who can contribute innovations back to the source code and define the roadmap for Lightning Web Components, driving Web standards forward for everyone."

Interested developers can check out a dev guide.

The new open source framework is the latest example of the company expanding the reach of its Lightning platform, having earlier this year introduced the Lightning Platform Mobile low-code development platform.