Introduction

LINCD introduces the concept of Linked Components. These are UI components built for Linked Data.

Each linked component gets linked to a specific shape. The shape informs the structure of the data that the component expects to receive.

By linking your component to a specific data structure, it gains several great benefits:

Features

Automatic data loading

All the data you request in your component will be automatically loaded when your component is used. LINCD.js can be connected to any number of triple stores / graph databases. Based on the type of data you request, LINCD.js will determine the right place to load your data from. Once the data is loaded, the component renders.

By default, requests are cached so that the same data is never loaded twice, even between components.

Automatic data validation

Once you have linked your component to specific shapes (data structures), LINCD.js ensures that only those nodes in the graph that match with this shape will be allowed to be used with this component. Because of this, you can rest assured that all the data will be there and in the right format.

Automatic re-renders

Linked components automatically rerender when part of the requested data is changed in the graph.

React

Currently, LINCD uses React for creating components, though other rendering engines may be added in the future.

Creating LINCD components is not much different from creating React components. Everything related to rendering and life-cycle methods is exactly the same.

The only thing that is different is how it handles data.