README
React Component Library
This project skeleton was created to help people get started with creating their own React component library using:
It also features:
- Storybook to help you create and show off your components
- Jest and React Testing Library enabling testing of the components
Development
Testing
npm run test
Building
npm run build
Storybook
To run a live-reload Storybook server on your local machine:
npm run storybook
To export your Storybook as static files:
npm run storybook:export
You can then serve the files under storybook-static
using S3, GitHub pages, Express etc.
Generating New Components
I've included a handy NodeJS util file under util
called create-component.js
. Instead of copy pasting components to create a new component, you can instead run this command to generate all the files you need to start building out a new component. To use it:
npm run generate YourComponentName
This will generate:
/src
/YourComponentName
YourComponentName.tsx
YourComponentName.stories.tsx
YourComponentName.test.tsx
YourComponentName.types.ts
YourComponentName.scss
The default templates for each file can be modified under util/templates
.
Don't forget to add the component to your index.ts
exports if you want the library to export the component!
Installing Component Library Locally
Let's say you have another project (test-app
) on your machine that you want to try installing the component library into without having to first publish the component library. In the test-app
directory, you can run:
npm i --save ../react-component-library
which will install the local component library as a dependency in test-app
. It'll then appear as a dependency in package.json
like:
...
"dependencies": {
...
"react-component-library": "file:../react-component-library",
...
},
...
Your components can then be imported and used in that project.
Publishing
Hosting via NPM
First, make sure you have an NPM account and are logged into NPM using the npm login
command.
Then update the name
field in package.json
to reflect your NPM package name in your private or public NPM registry. Then run:
npm publish
The "prepublishOnly": "npm run build"
script in package.json
will execute before publish occurs, ensuring the build/
directory and the compiled component library exist.
Hosting via GitHub
I recommend you host the component library using NPM. However, if you don't want to use NPM, you can use GitHub to host it instead.
You'll need to remove build/
from .gitignore
, build the component library (npm run build
), add, commit and push the contents of build
. See this branch for an example.
You can then install your library into other projects by running:
npm i --save git+https://github.com/HarveyD/react-component-library.git#branch-name
OR
npm i --save github:harveyd/react-component-library#branch-name
Usage
Let's say you created a public NPM package called harvey-component-library
with the TestComponent
component created in this repository.
Usage of the component (after the library installed as a dependency into another project) will be:
import React from "react";
import { TestComponent } from "harvey-component-library";
const App = () => (
<div className="app-container">
<h1>Hello I'm consuming the component library</h1>
<TestComponent theme="primary" />
</div>
);
export default App;
Check out this Code Sandbox for a live example.
Additional Help
Styled Components
If you want to use styled-components
, the changes required are a bit more involved. As such, I've created a branch where I've got styled-components
working in this component library, check it out here.
Component Code Splitting
Code splitting of your components is not supported by default.
Read this section of my blog post to find out how and why you would enable code splitting of your components. In summary, code splitting enables users to import components in isolation like:
import TestComponent from 'harvey-component-library/build/TestComponent';
This can reduce the bundle size for projects using older (CJS) module formats.
You can check out this branch or this commit to see what changes are neccesary to implement it.
Supporting Image Imports
Add the following library to your component library @rollup/plugin-image:
npm i -D @rollup/plugin-image
Then add it to rollup-config.js
:
...
plugins:[
...,
image(),
...
]
...
You can then import and render images in your components like:
import logo from './rollup.png';
export const ImageComponent = () => (
<div>
<img src={logo} />
</div>
);
Supporting JSON Imports
Add the following library to your component library @rollup/plugin-json:
npm i -D @rollup/plugin-json
Then add it to rollup-config.js
:
...
plugins:[
...,
json(),
...
]
...
You can then import and use JSON as ES6 Modules:
import data from './some-data.json';
export const JsonDataComponent = () => <div>{data.description}</div>;
Checkout the official Rollup plugin list for additional helpful plugins.