Zepto.js – a minimalist JavaScript library

Zepto is a minimalist JavaScript library for modern browsers with a largely jQuery-compatible API. If you use jQuery, you already know how to use Zepto.

See zeptojs.com for an extended introduction, downloads and documentation.

Zepto.js is licensed under the terms of the MIT License.

Want to give us money or a tip? Don't. Instead please donate to charity: water.

Building

The official site offers a download of the default distribution of Zepto. This is good for starting out. However, at some point you might want to add some optional modules and remove some of the default ones you don't need, to keep the size at a minimum. That's when you need to check out Zepto's source code and use the build commands. Alternatively you can use the web based Zepto Builder.

You will need Node.js installed on your system.

$ npm install
$ npm run-script dist

# do a custom build
$ MODULES="zepto event data" npm run-script dist

# on Windows
c:\zepto> SET MODULES=zepto event data
c:\zepto> npm run-script dist

The resulting files are:

1. dist/zepto.js
2. dist/zepto.min.js

If you install CoffeeScript globally, you can run make directly:

# one-time operation
$ npm install coffee-script --global

$ coffee make dist
$ MODULES="zepto event data ..." ./make dist

# on Windows
c:\zepto> SET MODULES=zepto event data
c:\zepto> coffee make dist

Zepto modules

Zepto modules are individual files in the "src/" directory.

module	default	description
zepto	✔	Core module; contains most methods
event	✔	Event handling via on() & off()
ajax	✔	XMLHttpRequest and JSONP functionality
form	✔	Serialize & submit web forms
ie	✔	Support for Internet Explorer 10+ on the desktop and Windows Phone 8
detect		Provides $.os and $.browser information
fx		The animate() method
fx_methods		Animated show, hide, toggle, and fade*() methods.
assets		Experimental support for cleaning up iOS memory after removing image elements from the DOM.
data		A full-blown data() method, capable of storing arbitrary objects in memory.
deferred		Provides $.Deferred promises API. Depends on the "callbacks" module.
callbacks		Provides $.Callbacks for use in "deferred" module.
selector		Experimental jQuery CSS extensions support for functionality such as $('div:first') and el.is(':visible').
touch		Fires tap– and swipe–related events on touch devices. This works with both `touch` (iOS, Android) and `pointer` events (Windows Phone).
gesture		Fires pinch gesture events on touch devices
stack		Provides andSelf & end() chaining methods
ios3		String.prototype.trim and Array.prototype.reduce methods (if they are missing) for compatibility with iOS 3.x.

Contributing

Please read our contribution guidelines for information on how to contribute.

Get in touch:

• @zeptojs

Write documentation

Zepto docs are written in Markdown and live in the "gh-pages" branch. They are published on zeptojs.com.

You can use GitHub's web interface to make quick changes to documentation for specific Zepto features (example: ajaxSettings). This will submit a pull request to us that we can review.

Report a bug

1. Check if the bug is already fixed in the master branch since the last release.
2. Check existing issues. Open a new one, including exact browser & platform information. For better formatting of your report, see GitHub-flavored Markdown.

Help! It doesn't work in browserify!

We have received complaints about not supporting popular JavaScript module loaders countless times. Here is a short explanation of our decision. A good JS loader should have a way to shim libraries which don't follow the CommonJS/AMD/UMD pattern.

Here is an example of shimming Zepto for browserify, allowing you to easily import only needed modules while leaving the source code untouched.

Running tests

You will need to install PhantomJS. On OS X, that's easy:

$ brew install phantomjs

To run the automated tests:

$ npm test

To run a test server, which you can hit with your browsers and devices:

$ npm start

Go to http://your-ip-address:3000/ on your browser and follow the instructions. For your convenience test failures and exceptions will be reported to the the console you started the test server in (as well as the browser console if available).