The general awkwardness of DOM functions is even worse for SVG than for HTML.

You don't want to create an element with:

var rect = document.createElementNS("http://www.w3.org/2000/svg", "rect");

You'd rather have concise, chainable and convenient functions not too inspired by Java, and to have internal references to gradients managed for you. Of course you want the few traps and browser differences handled for you.

And that might be about all you need. Because SVG is already a very high level model, you don't usually need a higher model to draw shapes in your browser. You don't need functions hiding the logic of the SVG.

And you don't want to import a big JavaScript file for that. hu.min.js weights 1.3 kb when gziped and has no dependency.

That's why you might find hu.js useful, assuming its limited set of features isn't too limited for you.

// Add to the body a new SVG element
var svg = hu('<svg>', 'body').css({ width:100, height:100 });

// Define a reusable radial gradient
var grad = svg.rgrad(0.3, 0.3, 0.8, 'yellow', 'green');

// Draw a circle using this gradient
hu('<circle>', svg).attr({ cx:50, cy:50, r:50, fill:grad });

<svg style="width: 100px; height: 100px;">
	<defs>
		<radialGradient id="ù1" cx="0.3" cy="0.3" r="0.8">
			<stop offset="0%" stop-color="yellow"></stop>
			<stop offset="100%" stop-color="green"></stop>
		</radialGradient>
	</defs>
	<circle cx="50" cy="50" r="50" fill="url(#ù1)"></circle>
</svg>

This still simple example has more shapes, event handling and animations :

Demonstration

See the commented source of the page to see how it's done.

hu.js is used for everything svg related in the open source Miaou platform, including a game.

The entry point of the library is the hu function. It's also aliased as ù which is obviously shorter and prettier but there's no problem in using hu if you're in a poor country where keyboards suffer from a deficiency in ù keys.

This function is used to

• create an svg element (and optionally append it to an existing html or svg element)
• find an existing svg element with a css selector
• wrap a provided svg element (and optionally append it to an existing html or svg element)

In all cases, there's always exactly one svg element in a resulting Hu object. The hu function returns null if the passed arguments make it impossible to create the element. If a provided selector (or nodelist, or jquery set, or array of elements) refers to more than one element, only the first one is considered.

Create an svg element and add it to document.body:

var svg = hu('<svg>', document.body);

Just create an element that we'll append later:

var group = hu('<g>');

Get an element we have in our group:

var rect = hu('#rectId', group);

These very similar functions let you set attributes or style properties.

Get the value of an attribute

var cx = circle.attr('cx');

Set a style property

svg.css('background', '#2a4646');

Create a line, append it to a group and set a few attributes

hu('<line>', group).attr({
	x1:10, y1:20, x2:30, y2:40,
	stroke:'green', strokeOpacity:0.6,
	strokeWidth:5, strokeLinecap:'round'
});

def creates an SVG node, adds it to the defs element of the closest element of type svg, and gives it an automatically generated id.

This is useful for shared resources like gradients.

Create a diagonal linear gradient with four steps of decreasing opacity, use it in a rectangle

var grad = svg.def('<linearGradient>').attr({
	x1:0, y1:0, x2:1, y2:1
}).stops(
	{offset:"0%", stopColor:"red", stopOpacity:1},
	{offset:"7%", stopColor:"green", stopOpacity:0.9},
	{offset:"20%", stopColor:"red", stopOpacity:0.2},
	{offset:"100%", stopColor:"green", stopOpacity:0}
);
ù('<rect>', svg).attr({x:0, y:0, width:100, height:20, fill:grad});

var logo = svg.def('<g>').attr('id','logo');

rgrad is a shortcut to create a simple radial gradient.

var grad = svg.rgrad(0.3, 0.3, 0.8, 'white', 'rgba(100,50,57,0.2)');

Note : similar hgrad and vgrad functions might be available in the future as shortcuts for horizontal and vertical gradients. Just ask if you want them now.

Animates one or more numerical style properties or attributes.

ù('<line>', svg).attr({
	x1:100, y1:0, x2:200, y2:20,
	stroke:'red', strokeOpacity:0.8,
}).animate({strokeOpacity:0, x2:300}, 1000, function(){
	this.remove();
});

This example can also be simplified into

ù('<line>', svg).attr({
	x1:100, y1:0, x2:200, y2:20,
	stroke:'red', strokeOpacity:0.8,
}).animate({strokeOpacity:0, x2:300}, 1000, ù.remove);

Those functions bind or unbind an event handler. You can pass several event types by separating them with spaces.

hu('<rect>', svg)
.attr({x:0, y:100, width:200, height:300})
.css({cursor:'pointer'})
.on('click', function(){
	hu(this).animate({x:100}, 500);
});

These functions let you append or prepend elements. The argument can be an svg node, a hu element, a css selector, an HTMLCollection, a jQuery element, etc.

Removes the element on which it is called.

Removes the svg nodes. (not the defs: to remove everything, just call the standard DOM functions)

Sets the innerText of the svg element.

ù('<text>', g)
.attr({x:50, y:50, textAnchor:"middle", alignmentBaseline:"middle"})
.css({fontWeight:'bold', fill:'white'})
.text('I am a centered white text');

You can easily add functions to hu elements.

ù.fn.textpos = function(x, y){
	this.attr({x:x, y:y, textAnchor:"middle", alignmentBaseline:"middle"});
}
ù('<text>', svg).text("my centered label").textpos(50, 50);

The MIT License.