Virtual-dom is a rendering engine and library designed for building declarative user interfaces. It functions by maintaining a lightweight tree representation of the document structure, which serves as a blueprint for synchronizing the application state with the browser display.
The library performs virtual DOM reconciliation by comparing two tree structures to calculate the minimal set of modifications required to update the interface. Once these differences are identified, it applies patches directly to the live document object model to ensure the screen reflects the latest state with minimal processing overhead.
Beyond standard synchronization, the library supports custom component lifecycle management, allowing developers to execute logic during the creation and destruction of nodes. It also provides mechanisms to optimize performance by bypassing standard diffing and patching processes for specific subtrees, enabling the integration of custom rendering logic for complex interface components.
