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The DRY Guide

DRY is a software development acronym that stands for: Don't Repeat Yourself.

When code (or markup) starts to accumulate a lot of copy-paste code or boilerplate, it becomes error-prone and hard to maintain, both for the original author and for future maintainers—which, in the case of a game mod, can also include other mod authors who want to base their mod on yours.

This page is designed to be a guide and quick reference for mod authors using the UI Framework on how to DRY, whether it's reduce boilerplate, refactor complex views, or just improve the overall consistency of a mod's look and feel.

Reusable Components

StardewUI provides a few different strategies for creating reusable "components", each with its own tradeoffs.

Feature Scope(1) Usage Target Expansion(2) Parameterization
Templates Local Tag Document
(Node Transformer)		 Static Template attributes
Included Views Global Asset Binding
(View Node)		 Dynamic Context only
Custom Views Global Tag Compiled
(View Factory)		 Static Normal attributes
  1. Local means available for use in the same view (.sml) file only; Global means available for use in any view.
  2. "Dynamic" means the ability to change which template is used, allowing a UI to display content that is not be known ahead of time and may even be from another mod.

The following flowchart may help decide on a strategy:

flowchart TD
    A["`Does it require non-standard **layout**?`"]
    B["`Does it draw something other than **text** or **sprites**?`"]
    C["`Will it create **overlays** or **custom animations**?`"]
    D["`Will it be used from **multiple views**?`"]
    E["`Do you need to insert **arbitrary content**?`"]
    F["`Should customization be done with **attributes** instead of **data**?`"]
    Custom{{Custom View}}:::outcome
    Included{{Included View}}:::outcome
    Template{{Template}}:::outcome
    A -- Yes --> Custom
    A -- No --> B
    B -- Yes --> Custom
    B -- No --> C
    C -- Yes --> Custom
    C -- No --> D
    D -- Yes --> Included
    D -- No --> E
    E -- Yes --> Template
    E -- No --> F
    F -- Yes --> Template
    F -- No --> Included
    classDef outcome fill:#6f6,stroke:#009,font-size:18pt

These are simply guidelines to help you choose—in practice, most UIs can be built using any or none of the above methods, and a well-designed project with a complex UI will most likely use several or all of them.