Imba

Imba is a friendly full-stack programming language for the web that
compiles to performant JavaScript. It has language-level support for
defining, extending, subclassing, instantiating and rendering DOM
nodes.

Get started

Try Imba instantly in your browser with our
playground,
or create a new project with:

``sh
npx imba create
`

Documentation

To get started with Imba, we recommend reading through the official guide.

Why Imba?

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Imba's syntax is minimal, beautiful, and packed with clever features. It combines logic, markup and styling in a powerful way. Fewer keystrokes and less switching files mean you'll be able to build things fast.

`imba
import './util/reset.css'

global css html,body m:0 p:0 w:100% h:100%

tag login-form < form

css input rd:md bc:gray3 h:20px fs:md
css button rd:md c:white bg:gray4 @hover:blue4




"Login as {name}"

imba.mount
`

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Imba powers both the frontend and the backend of Scrimba.com, our learning platform with 100K+ monthly active users. On the frontend, Imba replaces e.g., Vue or React, and on the backend, it works with the Node ecosystem (e.g., npm).

`imba
import express from 'express'
import services from './services.ts'
import html from './index.html'
import image from './confused-cat.png'

const app = express!

app.get '/404' do (req,res)
res.send String



"We could not find this page!"

app.get '/' do (req,res)
res.send html.body
`

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Inspired by Tailwind, Imba brings styles directly into your code. Styles can be scoped to files, components, and even parts of your tag trees. Style modifiers like @hover, @lg, @landscape and @dark can be used for extremely concise yet powerful styling.

`imba


global styles

global css button
position: relative
display: block
background: #b2f5ea
@hover background: #b2f9ea

tailwind-inspired shorthands

global css button
pos:relative d:block bg:blue5 bg@hover:blue6

tag App
# scoped styles
css item bg:blue4 m:2

# inline styles

for {type,title} in items
title
`

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Imba comes with a built-in bundler based on the blazing fast esbuild. Import stylesheets, images, typescript, html, workers and more without any configuration. Bundling is so fast that there is no difference between production and development mode - it all happens on-demand.

`imba


importing a worker


const worker = import.worker './analyzer'
const analyzer = new Worker(worker.url)


import an image


const logo = import './images/logo.png'
console.log "logo size: {logo.width}x{logo.height} - at {logo.url}"
`

When you run your app with the imba command, it automatically bundles and compiles your imba code, along with typescript, css and many other file types. It provides automatic reloading of both the server and client.

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The tooling is implemented as a typescript server plugin giving us great intellisense, diagnostics, and even cross-file refactorings that works with js/ts files in the same project. You can import types just like in typescript, and annotate variables, parameters and expressions. Like the language, the tooling is still in alpha, but improving every day.

`imba
import type { CookieOptions } from 'express-serve-static-core'

def flash res\Response, body\string, settings = {}
let options\CookieOptions = {
...settings
maxAge: 86400
secure: true
httpOnly: false
}

res.cookie('flash',body,options)
``

Community

For questions and support, please use our community chat on
Discord.

License

MIT

Copyright (c) 2015-present, Sindre Aarsaether