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chessboard.js

chessboard.js is a JavaScript chessboard component. It depends on jQuery.

Please see chessboardjs.com for documentation and examples.

What is chessboard.js?

chessboard.js is a JavaScript chessboard component with a flexible "just a board" API that

chessboard.js is a standalone JavaScript Chess Board. It is designed to be "just a board" and expose a powerful API so that it can be used in different ways. Here's a non-exhaustive list of things you can do with chessboard.js:

  • Use chessboard.js to show game positions alongside your expert commentary.
  • Use chessboard.js to have a tactics website where users have to guess the best move.
  • Integrate chessboard.js and chess.js with a PGN database and allow people to search and playback games (see Example 5000)
  • Build a chess server and have users play their games out using the chessboard.js board.

chessboard.js is flexible enough to handle any of these situations with relative ease.

What can chessboard.js not do?

The scope of chessboard.js is limited to "just a board." This is intentional and makes chessboard.js flexible for handling a multitude of chess-related problems.

This is a common source of confusion for new users. [remove?]

Specifically, chessboard.js does not understand anything about how the game of chess is played: how a knight moves, whose turn is it, is White in check?, etc.

Fortunately, the powerful chess.js library deals with exactly this sort of problem domain and plays nicely with chessboard.js's flexible API. Some examples of chessboard.js combined with chess.js: Example 5000, Example 5001, Example 5002

Please see the powerful chess.js library for an API to deal with these sorts of questions.

This logic is distinct from the logic of the board. Please see the powerful chess.js library for this aspect of your application.

Here is a list of things that chessboard.js is not:

  • A chess engine
  • A legal move validator
  • A PGN parser

chessboard.js is designed to work well with any of those things, but the idea behind chessboard.js is that the logic that controls the board should be independent of those other problems.

Docs and Examples

Developer Tools

# create a build in the build/ directory
npm run build

# re-build the website
npm run website

License

MIT License

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  • JavaScript 86.9%
  • CSS 7.6%
  • HTML 5.5%