React Habitat

React Habitat <3 Your CMS

React Habitat is designed for integrating React with your CMS using the DOM as the interface. It's based of some basic container programming principles and brings peace and order to multi page apps.

This framework exists so you can get on with the fun stuff!

Table of contents

• When to use React Habitat
• When not to use it
• Features
• Compatibility
• Installing
• Getting Started
• Options and Methods
• Contribute
• License information

When to use React Habitat

You should use React Habitat any time there is a framework or CMS rendering your HTML and you want one or multiple React components on the page(s). For example sometimes there are only sections of your page that you want to be a React Component, then this framework is perfect for that.

The idea behind this is that, rather than trying to initiate one or many React components; by either hard coding or using a Router. You switch it around so components "new up" themselves when required.

React Habitat works great with:

• Sitecore
• Adobe Experience Manager
• Umbraco
• Drupal
• Joomla
• Wordpress
• Magento
• ...etc

When not to use it

Typically if you're building a full-on one page React app that yanks data from restful API's... then this framework isn't really going to bring much benefit to you. However you are definitely invited to use it if you want to.

Features

• Tiny code footprint (only 8KB)
• Redux supported by including react-habitat-redux
• Pass data (props) to your components directly from HTML attributes and back again
• Automatic data/JSON parsing
• All page child apps can still share the same components, stores, events etc. (Everything is connected)
• Simple to swap out components for others (The beauty of IOC containers)
• For advanced users, you can use different components for different build environments
• 100% W3C HTML5 Valid
• TypeScript definitions included

Compatibility

• Supports Browsers IE9+ and all the evergreens.
• ES5, ES6/7 & TypeScript
• React v15 and up

We highly recommend you use something like WebPack or Browserify when using this framework.

Installing

Install with Node Package Manager (NPM)

npm install --save-dev react-habitat

This assumes that you’re using npm package manager with a module bundler like Webpack or Browserify.

If you don’t yet use npm or a modern module bundler, and would rather prefer a single-file UMD build that makes ReactHabitat available as a global object, you can grab a pre-built version from the dist folder.

Getting Started

Using ES5? Read the ES5 version here.

The basic pattern for integrating React Habitat into your application is:

• Structure your app with inversion of control (IoC) in mind.
• At application startup...
• Create a Container.
• Register React components.
• Set the container for later use in the DOM.
• At application execution...
• Use the DOM scope to resolve instances of the components.

This getting started guide walks you through these steps for a simple React application. This document assumes you already know:

• How to compile JSX; and
• How to bundle using something like webpack or browserify

1. Create a bootstrapper class

The class must extend ReactHabitat.Bootstrapper and is intended to be a entry point of your bundled app. So if you're using something like webpack or browserify then this is file to point it too.

In the constructor() of the class you need to register your React components with it and then set the container. The container is later bound to the DOM automatically so your React components self-initiate.

In React Habitat, you'd register a component something like this

container.register('SomeReactComponent', SomeReactComponent);

So for our sample application we need to register all of our components (classes) to be exposed to the DOM so things get wired up nicely.

import ReactHabitat                 from 'react-habitat';
import SomeReactComponent           from './SomeReactComponent';
import AnotherReactComponent        from './AnotherReactComponent';

class MyApp extends ReactHabitat.Bootstrapper {
    constructor(){
        super();

        // Create a new container builder
        var container = new ReactHabitat.Container();

        // Register your top level component(s) (ie mini/child apps)
        container.register('SomeReactComponent', SomeReactComponent);
        container.register('AnotherReactComponent', AnotherReactComponent);

        // Finally, set the container
        this.setContainer(container);
    }
}

// Always export a 'new' instance so it immediately evokes
export default new MyApp();

If you are using Redux

You will need to use a different container. Please install & configure the react-habitat-redux library. Then continue with step 2 below.

2. Application execution - render your components

During the web application execution you will want to make use of the components you registered. You do this by resolving them in the DOM from a scope.

When you resolve a component, a new instance of the object gets created (Resolving a component is roughly equivalent to calling 'new').

To resolve new instances of your components you need to attach a data-component attribute to a div or a span element in the HTML. These elements should always remain empty. Any child components should be nested inside the React components themselves.

Set the data-component value to equal a component name you have registered in the container.

For instance:

<div data-component="SomeReactComponent"></div>

Will be resolved by the following registration.

container.register('SomeReactComponent', SomeReactComponent);

So, for our sample app we would do something like this

<html>
    <body>
        <div data-component="SomeReactComponent"></div>
        <script src="myBundle.js" />
    </body>
</html>

When you view this page you will see a instance of SomeReactComponent automatically rendered in the div's place. In fact, you can add as many as you like and it will render multiple instances.

For example. This is perfectly valid.

<html>
    <body>

        <div data-component="SomeReactComponent"></div>
        <div data-component="SomeReactComponent"></div>
        <div data-component="SomeReactComponent"></div>

        <script src="myBundle.js" />
    </body>
</html>

Will render 3 instances of your component.

Note It's important that the output built javascript file is included at the end of the DOM just before the closing tag.

3. Passing properties (props) to your components

Resolving and registering components alone is not all that special, but passing data to it via html attributes is pretty useful. This allows the backend to easily pass data to your components in a modular fashion.

To set props you have two choices.

The first choice is to pass a JSON string to the data-props attribute.

For example

<div data-component="SomeReactComponent" data-props='{"title": "A nice title"}'></div>

Additionally or alternatively you can set properties via prefixing attributes with data-prop-.

For example

data-prop-title would expose title as a property inside the component.

There are two important things to note when setting these attribute type properties:

1. Hyphenated property names are converted to camelCase. Eg. data-prop-my-title would expose myTitle as a property in the component.
2. JSON and booleans are automatically parsed. Eg data-prop-my-bool="true" would expose the value of true, NOT the string representation "true".

Simple Example

<div data-component="SomeReactComponent"
    data-prop-title="A nice title"
    data-prop-showTitle="true">
</div>

Would expose props as

class SomeReactComponent extends React.Component {

    constructor(props) {
        super(props);

        // props.title === "A nice title";      //> true
        // props.showTitle === true;            //> true
    }

    render() {
        return <div>{ this.props.showTitle ? this.props.title : null }</div>;
    }
}

JSON Example

<div data-component="SomeReactComponent"
        data-prop-person="{'name': 'john', 'age': 22}">
</div>

Would expose as

class MyReactComponent extends React.Component {
    constructor(props) {
        super(props);

        return (
            <div>
                Name: {this.props.person.name}
                Age: {this.props.person.age}
            </div>
        );
    }
}

Options and Methods

Using ES5? Read the ES5 version here.

Setting the habitat's css class

You can set a custom css class on the habitat element by setting the data-habitat-class attribute on the target element.

Example

<div data-component="MyComponent" data-habitat-class="my-css-class"></div>

Will result in the following being rendered

<div data-habitat="C1" class="my-css-class">...</div>

Changing the habitat query selector

Default: 'data-component'

By default React Habitat will resolve components via the data-component attribute. You can configure this by assigning the componentSelector property in your constructor.

It will accept any string containing any valid attribute name.

Example

class MyApp extends ReactHabitat.Bootstrapper {
    constructor(){
        super();

        this.componentSelector = 'data-myComponents';
    }
}

Disposing the container

To unload the container and remove all React Habitat instances. Call the dispose() method.

Example

class MyApp extends ReactHabitat.Bootstrapper {
    constructor(){
        super();

        ...

        this.dispose();
    }
}

Want to contribute?

• Got an amazing idea to make this better?
• Found an annoying bug?

Please don't hesitate to raise an issue through GitHub or open a pull request to show off your fancy pants coding skills - we'll really appreciate it!

Key Contributors

Deloitte Digital Australia

• @jennasalau

Who is Deloitte Digital?

Part Business. Part Creative. Part Technology. One hundred per cent digital.

Pioneered in Australia, Deloitte Digital is committed to helping clients unlock the business value of emerging technologies. We provide clients with a full suite of digital services, covering digital strategy, user experience, content, creative, engineering and implementation across mobile, web and social media channels.

http://www.deloittedigital.com/au

LICENSE (BSD-3-Clause)

Copyright (C) 2015, Deloitte Digital. All rights reserved.

React Habitat can be downloaded from: https://github.com/DeloitteDigitalAPAC/react-habitat

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

• Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

• Neither the name of the copyright holder nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.