Dart Expander for React JS
Thanks to the folks at Vacuumlabs for creating this project! ❤️
If you are not familiar with the ReactJS library, read this react tutorial first.
-
Install the Dart SDK
brew install dart
-
Create a
pubspec.yamlfile in the root of your project, and addreactas a dependency:name: your_package_name version: 1.0.0 environment: sdk: ^2.11.0 dependencies: react: ^6.0.0
-
Install the dependencies using pub:
dart pub get
In a .html file, include the native javascript react and react_dom libraries
(provided with this library for compatibility reasons) within your .html file,
and also add an element with an id to mount your React component.
Lastly, add the .js file that Dart will generate. The file will be the name of the .dart file that
contains your main entrypoint, with .js at the end.
<html>
<head>
<!-- ... -->
</head>
<body>
<div id="react_mount_point">Here will be react content</div>
<script src="packages/react/react.js"></script>
<script src="packages/react/react_dom.js"></script>
<script defer src="your_dart_file_name.dart.js"></script>
</body>
</html>Note: When serving your application in production, use
packages/react/react_with_react_dom_prod.jsfile instead of the un-minifiedreact.js/react_dom.jsfiles shown in the example above.
Once you have an .html file containing the necessary .js files, you can initialize React
in the main entrypoint of your Dart application.
import 'dart:html';
import 'package:react/react.dart';
import 'package:react/react_dom.dart' as react_dom;
main() {
// Something to render... in this case a simple <div> with no props, and a string as its children.
var component = div({}, "Hello world!");
// Render it into the mount node we created in our .html file.
react_dom.render(component, querySelector('#react_mount_point'));
}If you are familiar with React (without JSX extension) React-dart shouldn't surprise you much. All elements are defined as
functions that take props as first argument and children as optional second argument. props should implement Map and children is either one React element or List with multiple elements.
var aDiv = div({"className": "something"}, [
h1({"style": {"height": "20px"}}, "Headline"),
a({"href":"something.com"}, "Something"),
"Some text"
]);For event handlers you must provide function that takes a SyntheticEvent (defined in this library).
var aButton = button({"onClick": (SyntheticMouseEvent event) => print(event)});-
Define custom class that extends Component2 and implements - at a minimum -
render.// cool_widget.dart import 'package:react/react.dart'; class CoolWidgetComponent extends Component2 { render() => div({}, "CoolWidgetComponent"); }
-
Then register the class so ReactJS can recognize it.
var CoolWidget = registerComponent2(() => CoolWidgetComponent());
Warning:
registerComponent2should be called only once per component and lifetime of application. -
Then you can use the registered component similarly as native elements.
// app.dart import 'dart:html'; import 'package:react/react.dart'; import 'package:react/react_dom.dart' as react_dom; import 'cool_widget.dart'; main() { react_dom.render(CoolWidget({}), querySelector('#react_mount_point')); }
// cool_widget.dart
import 'package:react/react.dart';
class CoolWidgetComponent extends Component2 {
@override
render() {
return div({}, props['text']);
}
}
var CoolWidget = registerComponent2(() => CoolWidgetComponent());// app.dart
import 'dart:html';
import 'package:react/react.dart';
import 'package:react/react_dom.dart' as react_dom;
import 'cool_widget.dart';
main() {
react_dom.render(CoolWidget({"text": "Something"}), querySelector('#react_mount_point'));
}Note: The typed interface capabilities of this library are fairly limited, and can result in extremely verbose implementations. We strongly recommend using the OverReact package - which makes creating statically-typed React UI components using Dart easy.
// cool_widget.dart
typedef CoolWidgetType({String headline, String text, int counter});
var _CoolWidget = registerComponent2(() => CoolWidgetComponent());
CoolWidgetType CoolWidget({String headline, String text, int counter}) {
return _CoolWidget({'headline':headline, 'text':text});
}
class CoolWidgetComponent extends Component2 {
String get headline => props['headline'];
String get text => props['text'];
int get counter => props['counter'];
@override
render() {
return div({},
h1({}, headline),
span({}, text),
span({}, counter),
);
}
}// app.dart
import 'dart:html';
import 'package:react/react.dart';
import 'package:react/react_dom.dart' as react_dom;
import 'cool_widget.dart';
void main() {
react_dom.render(
myComponent(
headline: "My custom headline",
text: "My custom text",
counter: 3,
),
querySelector('#react_mount_point')
);
}The Component2 class mirrors ReactJS' React.Component class, and contains all the same methods.
See: ReactJS Lifecycle Method Documentation for more information.
class MyComponent extends Component2 {
@override
void componentWillMount() {}
@override
void componentDidMount() {}
@override
void componentWillReceiveProps(Map nextProps) {}
@override
void componentWillUpdate(Map nextProps, Map nextState) {}
@override
void componentDidUpdate(Map prevProps, Map prevState) {}
@override
void componentWillUnmount() {}
@override
bool shouldComponentUpdate(Map nextProps, Map nextState) => true;
@override
Map getInitialState() => {};
@override
Map getDefaultProps() => {};
@override
render() => div({}, props['text']);
}The use of component refs in react-dart is a bit different from React JS.
- You can specify a ref name in component props and then call ref method to get the referenced element.
- Return values for Dart components, DOM components and JavaScript components are different.
- For a Dart component, you get an instance of the Dart class of the component.
- For primitive components (like DOM elements), you get the DOM node.
- For JavaScript composite components, you get a
ReactElementrepresenting the react component.
If you want to work with DOM nodes of dart or JS components instead,
you can call top level findDOMNode on anything the ref returns.
var DartComponent = registerComponent2(() => _DartComponent());
class _DartComponent extends Component2 {
@override
render() => div({});
void someInstanceMethod(int count) {
window.alert('count: $count');
}
}
var ParentComponent = registerComponent2(() => _ParentComponent());
class _ParentComponent extends Component2 {
final inputRef = createRef<InputElement>(); // inputRef.current is the DOM node.
final dartComponentRef = createRef<_DartComponent>(); // dartComponentRef.current is the instance of _DartComponent
@override
void componentDidMount() {
print(inputRef.current.value); // Prints "hello" to the console.
dartComponentRef.current.someInstanceMethod(5); // Calls the method defined in _DartComponent
react_dom.findDOMNode(dartComponentRef); // Returns div element rendered from _DartComponent
react_dom.findDOMNode(this); // Returns root dom element rendered from this component
}
@override
render() {
return div({},
input({"ref": inputRef, "defaultValue": "hello"}),
DartComponent({"ref": dartComponentRef}),
);
}
}