chessboard-element

A element for your web pages

Documentation

Please check out the more useful full documentation site:

https://justinfagnani.github.io/chessboard-element/

Quick Start

unpkg.com

<script type="module" src="https://unpkg.com/chessboard-element?module"></script>

<chess-board></chess-board>

NPM

npm i chessboard-element

<!--
  Adjust path to node_modules and use a dev server that support Node module
  resolution, like es-dev-server: https://www.npmjs.com/package/es-dev-server
-->
<script type="module" src="https://github.com/justinfagnani/chessboard-element/raw/main/node_modules/chessboard-element/index.js"></script>

<chess-board></chess-board>

What is chessboard-element?

chessboard-element is a standalone chess board web component. It defines a <chess-board> custom element that works anywhere HTML works - in plain HTML pages, JavaScript, or your framework of choice. It is designed to be "just a board" and expose a powerful API so that it can be used in different ways.

Here's a non-exhaustive list of things you can do with chessboard-element:

• Use <chess-board> to show game positions alongside your expert commentary.
• Use <chess-board> to have a tactics website where users have to guess the best move.
• Integrate chessboard-element and chess.js with a PGN database and allow people to search and playback games.
• Build a chess server and have users play their games out using the <chess-board> element.

chessboard-element is flexible enough to handle any of these situations with relative ease.

Relationship to chessboard.js

chessboard-element is a fork of of the wonderful chessboard.js library, repackaging it as a web component and updating the implementation to modern JavaScript and CSS. The differences include:

• No need to use JavaScript for basic boards, just use the <chess-board> element.
• All chessboard DOM is encapsulated in a shadow root. Styles do not leak.
• No dependency on jQuery
• Just one script tag required, all dependencies and styles are imported directly.
• Published as standard JS modules
• Uses CSS transitions for all animations
• Uses CSS grid and flexbox for layout
• New declarative attribute and property APIs play nice with declarative frameworks and template libraries like React and lit-html
• Supports arbitrary piece renderers and defaults to SVG pieces

Many thanks to Chris Oakman for chessboard.js.

What can chessboard-element not do?

The scope of chessboard-element is limited to "just a board." This is intentional and makes chessboard-element flexible for handling a multitude of chess-related problems.

Specifically, chessboard-element does not understand anything about how the game of chess is played: how a knight moves, whose turn is it, is White in check?, etc.

Fortunately, the powerful chess.js library deals with exactly this sort of problem domain and plays nicely with chessboard-element's flexible API. Some examples of chessboard-element combined with chess.js: Example 5000, Example 5001, Example 5002

Please see the powerful chess.js library for an API to deal with these sorts of questions.

This logic is distinct from the logic of the board. Please see the powerful chess.js library for this aspect of your application.

Here is a list of things that chessboard-element is not:

• A chess engine
• A legal move validator
• A PGN parser

chessboard-element is designed to work well with any of those things, but the idea behind chessboard-element is that the logic that controls the board should be independent of those other problems.

Developing

# Build the TypeScript files
npm run build

# Docs...
npm run analyze
npm run bundle

# Build the docs site
cd docs-src
npm run build:ts
npm run build

# Start the docs server
npm run serve

License

MIT License