react-supervisor

react-supervisor is a very simple npm library (<= 4kb) for dealing with react components in templates (standard MVC way). If you ever worked with mid/big enterprise software with multiple technologies you probably know how difficult it is to maintain various technologies in one or multiple projects. You will find it very useful to create new components with React and append them in your website in organised way. Hope it will help you!

Warning: This tool is not designed for React apps created via create-react-app or common SPA development. However, if you want to embed multiple SPA apps (like microfrontends or so on) your welcome to use it!

Installation

npm i react-supervisor
# or 
yarn add react-supervisor

Usage

import { ReactSupervisor } from "react-supervisor";

// register components

ReactSupervisor.initialize();

// optional
window["ReactSupervisor"] = ReactSupervisor;
ReactSupervisor.info(); // generates stats in console
ReactSupervisor.forceRender(); // will force a DOM scan, it's helpful with dynamically created nodes

Versions

react	react-supervisor
^18.0.0	^4.0.1
^17.0.0	^3.0.0
^16.0.0	^2.0.0

What it does?

• scans the DOM and renders registered components
• takes all data- attributes from container and passes them as props to component
• watches for changes to the DOM and renders new components into selectors that match
• the parent of a correctly rendered component will be marked with the rendered class
• convert, parse all castable data- attributes with specified type.
• supported types for castable attributes (string as a default):
  • number - data-cast-number-field-name="123"
  • float - data-cast-float-field-name="3.14"
  • json - data-cast-number-field-name='{ "first_name": "Joe", "last_name": "Doe" }'
  • boolean - data-cast-float-field-name="true"
  • string - data-cast-float-field-name="3.14"

What it doesn't do?

• doesn't affect your css styles
• doesn't share state - it means that all components are independent

What I can do with it?

You can create complex dashboards, modals, or simple form controls (such as async search, drag & drop or date pickers etc). You can still use your favorite CSS frameworks (such as bootstrap), React UI frameworks (eg Fluent UI, Material-UI, etc) or any other React standalone components (eg react-select). More examples will appear in the documentation soon.

Castable data attributes table

attribute	key in props	value
data-cast-number-age="3.14"	age	3
data-cast-float-pi-value="3.14"	piValue	3.14
data-cast-json-data='{"piValue": 3.14}'	data	{ piValue: 3.14 }
data-cast-boolean-is-active="true"	isActive	true
data-cast-boolean-is-active="0"	isActive	false
data-cast-string-index="0001"	index	"0001"

In js/html logic the default type is string, if that works for you then there is no need to use data-cast-type convention, but its really helpful if you have to pass json objects into components

Examples

# Register once and use multiple times

// ./some/path.js
import { ReactSupervisor } from "react-supervisor";
import Button from '@material-ui/core/Button';

ReactSupervisor.registerComponent(".material-ui-button", Button);
ReactSupervisor.initialize();

<!-- ./some/page.html -->
<div class="material-ui-button" data-children="Click me!" data-color="primary"></div>
<div class="material-ui-button" data-children="And me!" data-color="secondary"></div>

# If you need to render a more complicated component you can use custom render

// ./path.js
import { ReactSupervisor } from "react-supervisor";
import Button from '@material-ui/core/Button';

ReactSupervisor.registerComponentWithCustomRender(".awesome-button", (el, props) => {
    // do whatever you want with props or any other logic
    ReactDOM.render(<Button {...props} />, el);
});

<!-- ./some/page.html -->
<div class="awesome-button" data-children="Awesome click!" data-color="primary"></div>

# You can register component directly within file

// ./some/path.js
import { ReactSupervisor } from "react-supervisor";
import React, { useState } from "react";

const CallMeModalComponent = () => {
    const [state, setState] = useState(0);
    return (<>Call me</>);
};

ReactSupervisor.registerComponent(".call-me-modal", CallMeModalComponent);
// no export needed, but you have to import that file in your entrypoint

<!-- ./page.html -->
<div class="call-me-modal"></div>

# Pass props via data attributes

// ./path.js
import { ReactSupervisor } from "react-supervisor";
import React, { useState } from "react";
import { TextField } from '@fluentui/react/lib/TextField';

ReactSupervisor.registerComponent(".fluent-ui-textarea", TextField);

<!-- ./page.html -->
<div class="fluent-ui-textarea" data-label="Description" data-name="description" data-rows="3"></div>

# Use castable data attributes to pass any data type you want, e.g. json object

<div class="user-details" data-cast-json-user-details='{ "first_name": "Joe", "age": 256 }'></div>

This syntax will inject a userDetails object in component's props.

const UserDetailsComponent = (props) => {
    return (<>${props.userDetails?.first_name}</>); // Joe
}

Contributing

Any help would be much appreciated. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

License

MIT