react-mde

A simple yet powerful and extensible Markdown Editor editor for React, inspired by GitHub.

Demo

Live demo.

JavaScript demo project: https://github.com/andrerpena/react-mde-js-demo

TypeScript demo project: https://github.com/andrerpena/react-mde-ts-demo

Installing

npm install --save react-mde

Dependencies

React-mde currently depends on:

• Font Awesome - For the icons (this dependency will be removed soon)
• Showdown - For rendering the markdown preview

So...

npm install --save showdown font-awesome

Using

React-mde is a completely controlled component.

Example in JavaScript:

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import ReactMde, { ReactMdeCommands } from 'react-mde';

export default class App extends Component {

    constructor() {
        super();
        this.state = {
            reactMdeValue: {text: '', selection: null},
        };
    }

    handleValueChange = (value) => {
        this.setState({reactMdeValue: value});
    }

    render() {
        return (
            <div className="container">
                <ReactMde
                    textAreaProps={{
                        id: 'ta1',
                        name: 'ta1',
                    }}
                    value={this.state.reactMdeValue}
                    onChange={this.handleValueChange}
                    commands={ReactMdeCommands.getDefaultCommands()}
                    
                />
            </div>
        );
    }
}

Example in TypeScript:

import * as React from 'react';
import ReactMde, { ReactMdeCommands, ReactMdeTypes } from 'react-mde';

interface AppProps {
}

interface AppState {
    reactMdeValue: ReactMdeTypes.Value;
}

export class App extends React.Component<AppProps, AppState> {

    constructor(props: AppProps) {
        super(props);
        this.state = {
            reactMdeValue: {text: ''},
        };
    }

    handleValueChange = (value: ReactMdeTypes.Value) => {
        this.setState({reactMdeValue: value});
    }

    render() {
        return (
            <div className="container">
                <ReactMde
                    textAreaProps={{
                        id: 'ta1',
                        name: 'ta1',
                    }}
                    value={this.state.reactMdeValue}
                    onChange={this.handleValueChange}
                    commands={ReactMdeCommands.getDefaultCommands()}
                />
            </div>
        );
    }
}

Props:

• value: The current value. This property should look like {text: "", selection: {start:0, end:2} where text is the text and selection is an object containint start and end representing what should be selected. Passing null to selection is perfectly fine.
• onChange: Function that should handle the value. The value passed as a parameter to the onChange function is of the same type as the value prop above.
• commands: An array or array of command objects. The first array represents groups, the second array represents commands inside that group. Take a look of how to create a custom command below.
• textAreaProps: Whatever you want to pass to the textarea component.
• showdownOptions: An object with whatever options you want to pass to Showdown. Please refer to ShowdownOptions to a list of available options. Notice that tables, for example, are disabled by default in Showdown. So, in order to enable tables, you'd pass something like showdownOptions={{tables: true}} to ReactMde.

Styling

The following tyles from React-mde should be added: (Both .scss and .css files are available. No need to use sass-loader if you don't want)

Easiest way: import react-mde-all.css:

import 'react-mde/lib/styles/css/react-mde-all.css';

If you want to have a more granular control over the styles, you can import each individual file:

import 'react-mde/lib/styles/css/react-mde.css';
import 'react-mde/lib/styles/css/react-mde-toolbar.css';
import 'react-mde/lib/styles/css/react-mde-textarea.css';
import 'react-mde/lib/styles/css/react-mde-preview.css';

You still have to import font-awesome while we don't embed the icons for the toolbar commands, normalize is optional:

import '../node_modules/normalize.css/normalize.css';
import '../node_modules/font-awesome/css/font-awesome.css';

Commands

React-mde allows you to use the build-in commands, implement your own commands, or both.

There are two types of commands, the button commands (default if you don't say anything), and the dropdown commands. button commands appear as button and execute a single action when clicked. dropdown commands have subCommands and will display a dropdown when you click them.

Anatomy of a button command

You don't have to create your own commands at all, but if you want, this is how a command looks like:

const makeLinkCommand = {
    icon: 'link',
    tooltip:
        'Insert a link',
    execute:
        (text: string, selection: TextSelection) => {
            const {newText, insertionLength} = insertText(text, '[', selection.start);
            const finalText = insertText(newText, '](url)', selection.end + insertionLength).newText;
            return {
                text: finalText,
                selection: {
                    start: selection.start + insertionLength,
                    end: selection.end + insertionLength,
                },
            };
        },
};

props:

• type: The type of the command.
• icon: If this is a text, it will print a font-awesome <i/> element with the classes fa fa-${icon}. Passing bold will print <i className="fa fa-bold"></i>. If the passing value is a React element, it will print the react element.
• tooltip: If any, it will print a tooltip with the passed text.
• execute: The function that will actually execute the command. This function accepts 2 parameters: text, which is the whole textarea text before your command, and selection, a 2 items array containing the beggining and end of the current selection. Your function should return the current text (after your command) and the current selection (after your command).

Anatomy of a dropdown command

{
    type: 'dropdown',
    icon: 'header',
    subCommands: [
        {
            content: <p className="header-1">Header</p>,
            execute: function (text, selection) {
                return makeHeader(text, selection, '# ');
            }
        },
        {
            content: <p className="header-2">Header</p>,
            execute: function (text, selection) {
                return makeHeader(text, selection, '## ');
            }
        },
        {
            content: <p className="header-3">Header</p>,
            execute: function (text, selection) {
                return makeHeader(text, selection, '### ');
            }
        }
    ]
}

props:

• type: The type of the command.
• icon: If this is a text, it will print a font-awesome <i/> element with the classes fa fa-${icon}. Passing bold will print <i className="fa fa-bold"></i>. If the passing value is a React element, it will print the react element.
• subCommands: A list of commands that will dropdown when you click the button.

subCommands is an array of objects with the following props:

• content: A React component that will be displayed within the li.
• execute: The function that will actually execute the command. This function accepts 2 parameters: text, which is the whole textarea text before your command, and selection, a 2 items array containing the beggining and end of the current selection. Your function should return the current text (after your command) and the current selection (after your command).

Composition and custom layouts

ReactMde is designed to make it easy for users to customize the layout, or to make any of it sub-components invisible, like the Preview, for instance. In order to do so, instead of cluttering ReactMde with options like previewVisible, I've decided to make the ReactMde component, itself, just a thin layout wrapper for its 3 internal components.

If you want to create your own layout, please take a look at the source code of the ReactMde component: https://github.com/andrerpena/react-mde/blob/master/src/ReactMde.tsx. It's easy to simply create your own, only leveraging the internal components. These internal components are accessible like this:

import * as ReactMde from 'react-mde';
// Now you have (among other utility modules):
// The ReactMde.ReactMdeToolbar component
// The ReactMde.ReactMdeTextArea component
// The ReactMde.ReactMdePreview component

Again, just take a look at ReactMde's source code and create your own with the layout you prefer.

Migrating from 1.* to 2.*

2.* is a major refactoring of the code to improve composability

Major differences:

• Now the main react-mde component is composed of 3 sub-components, the ReactMdeToolbar, the ReactMdeTextArea and the ReactMdePreview. You can import react-mde directly or import each of the sub-components and have more flexibility building your own layout.

• Each sub-component now has its own CSS/SCSS file and we're now including a react-mde-all.css, or the SCSS alternative, for simplicity.

• We realized that on version 1.*, it was difficult to select which components you wanted to use. So now...

  import * as ReactMde from 'react-mde'; ReactMde.ReactMdeComponents // contains all components and you can select your own components ReactMde.getDefaultComponents() // will return an array with all components

How to upgrade an existing 1.* JavaScript project: https://github.com/andrerpena/react-mde-js-demo/commit/e62af170fa258f7f17f29d41f395f24e9eaf3b72

How to upgrade an existing 1.* TypeScript project: https://github.com/andrerpena/react-mde-ts-demo/commit/d6718305c0132649cabca432e1e9415ea06cd643

Migrating from the 0.* versions to 1.*

Major differences:

• Instead of using the getDefaultCommands function, now the default commands are exported directly.
• The textAreaId and textareaName props were replaced by textAreaProps that allows you to pass whatever you want to the textarea component.
• The paths of the CSS and SCSS have changed.

Roadmap

Check the project here: https://github.com/andrerpena/react-mde/projects/1

Licence

React-mde is MIT licensed

About the author

Made with ❤️ by André Pena. Check out my website: http://andrerpena.me