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Usage

This will attempt to show you how to use React in Scala.

It is expected that you know how React itself works.

Contents

Setup

  1. Add Scala.js to your project.

  2. Add scalajs-react to SBT:

// core = essentials only. No bells or whistles.
libraryDependencies += "com.github.japgolly.scalajs-react" %%% "core" % "1.4.1"

  1. Add React to your build.

    How to do this depends on your Scala.JS config and build setup.

    If you're using scalajs-bundler, add the following SBT settings to get started:

      enablePlugins(ScalaJSPlugin)

  enablePlugins(ScalaJSBundlerPlugin)

  libraryDependencies += "com.github.japgolly.scalajs-react" %%% "core" % "1.4.1"

  npmDependencies in Compile ++= Seq(
    "react" -> "16.7.0",
    "react-dom" -> "16.7.0")

    If you're using old-school jsDependencies, add something akin to:

    // React JS itself (Note the filenames, adjust as needed, eg. to remove addons.)
jsDependencies ++= Seq(

  "org.webjars.npm" % "react" % "16.7.0"
    /        "umd/react.development.js"
    minified "umd/react.production.min.js"
    commonJSName "React",

  "org.webjars.npm" % "react-dom" % "16.7.0"
    /         "umd/react-dom.development.js"
    minified  "umd/react-dom.production.min.js"
    dependsOn "umd/react.development.js"
    commonJSName "ReactDOM",

  "org.webjars.npm" % "react-dom" % "16.7.0"
    /         "umd/react-dom-server.browser.development.js"
    minified  "umd/react-dom-server.browser.production.min.js"
    dependsOn "umd/react-dom.development.js"
    commonJSName "ReactDOMServer"),

See here for tips on configuring your IDE.

Creating Virtual-DOM

See VDOM.md.

Callbacks

See CALLBACK.md.

Creating Components

This is how to create components from Scala. (For JS components, see INTEROP.md.)

There is a component builder DSL beginning at ScalaComponent.build. You throw types and functions at it, call build and when it compiles you will have a React component.

  1. The first step is to specify your component's properties type, and a component name.
import japgolly.scalajs.react._
import japgolly.scalajs.react.vdom.html_<^._

object MyComponent {

  case class Props(/* TODO */)

  val myComponent =
    ScalaComponent.builder[Props]("MyComponent")
      |
}

  1. (Optional) If you want a stateful component, call one of the methods beginning with .initialState. Use your IDE to see the methods and the differences in their type signatures.

  2. (Optional) If you want a backend (explained below) for your component (and you do for non-trivial components), call .backend. If your backend has a .render function, instead of .backend here you can call .renderBackend which will use a macro to instantiate your backend, and automatically choose the appropriate .render function in the next step, bypassing it for you.

  3. Choose from one of the many available render functions. Use your IDE to see the methods and the differences in their type signatures. Alternatively, if you (for whatever reason) manually created a backend in the previous step and your backend has a render function, you can call .renderBackend here to have the builder automatically select the appropriate render function.

  4. (Optional) Type in the name of one of the React lifecycle hooks (eg. componentDidMount) to add that hook to your component.

  5. Call .build and you're done.
    If your props is a singleton type (eg. Unit) then the buider automatically (i.e. via implicit resolution) provides your component a CtorType that doesn't the props be specified. (See TYPES.md for more info.)

Example with props:

val Hello =
  ScalaComponent.builder[String]("Hello")
    .render_P(name => <.div("Hello there ", name))
    .build

// Usage:
Hello("Draconus")

Example without props:

val NoArgs =
  ScalaComponent.builder[Unit]("No args")
    .renderStatic(<.div("Hello!"))
    .build

// Usage:
NoArgs()

Backends

In addition to props and state, if you look at the React samples you'll see that most components need additional functions and even, (in the case of React's second example, the timer example), state outside of the designated state object (!). In plain React with JS, functions which can have access to the component's props and state (such as helpers fns and event handlers), are placed within the body of the component class. In scalajs-react you need another place for such functions as scalajs-react emphasises type-safety and provides different types for the component's scope at different points in the lifecycle. Instead they should be placed in some arbitrary class you may provide, called a backend.

See the online timer demo for an example.

As mentioned above, for the extremely common case of having a backend class with a render method, the builder comes with a .renderBackend method. It will locate the render method, determine what the arguments need (props/state/propsChildren) by examining the types or the arg names when the types are ambiguous, and create the appropriate function at compile-time. If can also automate the creation of the backend, see below.

Example before: (yuk!)

type State = Vector[String]

class Backend(bs: BackendScope[Unit, State]) {
  def render: VdomElement = {
    val s = bs.state.runNow()  // yuk!! .runNow() is unsafe
    <.div(
      <.div(s.length, " items found:"),
      <.ol(s.toTagMod(i => <.li(i))))
  }
}

val Example = ScalaComponent.builder[Unit]("Example")
  .initialState(Vector("hello", "world"))
  .backend(new Backend(_))
  .render(_.backend.render)
  .build

After:

class Backend(bs: BackendScope[Unit, State]) {
  def render(s: State): VdomElement = // ← Accept props, state and/or propsChildren as argument
    <.div(
      <.div(s.length, " items found:"),
      <.ol(s.toTagMod(i => <.li(i))))
}

val Example = ScalaComponent.builder[Unit]("Example")
  .initialState(Vector("hello", "world"))
  .renderBackend[Backend]  // ← Use Backend class and backend.render
  .build

You can also create a backend yourself and still use .renderBackend:

val Example = ScalaComponent.builder[Unit]("Example")
  .initialState(Vector("hello", "world"))
  .backend(new Backend(_)) // ← Fine! Do it yourself!
  .renderBackend           // ← Use backend.render
  .build

Using Components

Once you've created a Scala React component, it mostly acts like a typical Scala case class. To use it, you create an instance. To create an instance, you call the constructor.

val NoArgs =
  ScalaComponent.static("No args")(<.div("Hello!"))

val Hello =
  ScalaComponent.builder[String]("Hello")
    .render_P(name => <.div("Hello there ", name))
    .build

// Usage
<.div(
  NoArgs(),
  Hello("John"),
  Hello("Jane"))

Keys

To add a key to a component instance, call .withKey(key) before instantiation.

Examples:

<.div(
  VdomArray(
  NoArgs.withKey("noargs")(),
  Hello.withKey("john")("John"),
  Hello.withKey("jane")("Jane")))

Refs

See REFS.md.

Rendering

With React JS you'd call ReactDOM.render(comp, target, callback?) to render a component into DOM.

With scalajs-react, (unmounted) components come with a .renderIntoDOM(target, callback?) method.

import org.scalajs.dom.document

NoArgs().renderIntoDOM(document.body)

React Extensions

  • Where setState(State) is applicable, you can also run:

    • modState(State => State)
    • modState((State, Props) => State)
    • setStateOption(Option[State])
    • modStateOption(State => Option[State])
    • modStateOption((State, Props) => Option[State])

  • React has a classSet addon for specifying multiple optional class attributes. The same mechanism is applicable with this library is as follows:

    <.div(
  ^.classSet(
    "message"           -> true,
    "message-active"    -> true,
    "message-important" -> props.isImportant,
    "message-read"      -> props.isRead),
  props.message)

// Or for convenience, put all constants in the first arg:
<.div(
  ^.classSet1(
    "message message-active",
    "message-important" -> props.isImportant,
    "message-read"      -> props.isRead),
  props.message)

  • Sometimes you want to allow a function to both get and affect a portion of a component's state. Anywhere that you can call .setState() you can also call .zoomState() to return an object that has the same .setState(), .modState() methods but only operates on a subset of the total state.

    def incrementCounter(s: StateAccessPure[Int]): Callback =
  s.modState(_ + 1)

// Then in some other component:
case class State(name: String, counter: Int)

def render = {
  val f = $.zoomState(_.counter)(value => _.copy(counter = value))
  button(onclick --> incrementCounter(f), "+")
}

    You can cut down on boilerplate by using Monocle and the scalajs-react Monocle extensions. By doing so, the above snippet will look like this:

    import monocle.macros._

@Lenses case class State(name: String, counter: Int)

def render = {
  val f = $ zoomStateL State.counter
  button(onclick --> incrementCounter(f), "+")
}

  • The .getDOMNode callback can sometimes execute when unmounted which is an increasingly annoying bug to track down. Since React 16 with its new burn-it-all-down error handling approach, an occurance of this can be fatal. In order to properly model the reality of the callback and ensure compile-time safety, rather than just getting back a VDOM reference, the return type is an ADT like this:

                                     ComponentDom
                                  ↑        ↑
               ComponentDom.Mounted        ComponentDom.Unmounted
                ↑            ↑
ComponentDom.Element      ComponentDom.Text

    Calling .getDOMNode from without lifecycle callbacks, returns a ComponentDom.Mounted. Calling .getDOMNode on a mounted component instance or a BackendScope now returns ComponentDom which may or may not be mounted. Jump into the ComponentDom source to see the available methods but in most cases you'll use one of the following:

    trait ComponentDom {
  def mounted  : Option[ComponentDom.Mounted]
  def toElement: Option[dom.Element]
  def toText   : Option[dom.Text]

    In unit tests you'll typically use asMounted().asElement() or asMounted().asText() for inspection.

Gotchas

  • table(tr(...)) will appear to work fine at first then crash later. React needs table(tbody(tr(...))).

  • React's setState functions are asynchronous; they don't apply invocations of this.setState until the end of render or the current callback. Calling .state after .setState will return the initial, original value, i.e.

    val s1 = $.state
val s2 = "new state"
$.setState(s2)
$.state == s2 // returns false
$.state == s1 // returns true

    If this is a problem you have 2 choices.

    1. Use modState.
    2. Refactor your logic so that you only call setState once.
    3. Use Scalaz state monads as demonstrated in the online state monad example.

  • Since setState and modState return callbacks, if you need to call them from outside of a component (e.g. by accessing the backend of a mounted component), call .runNow() to trigger the change; else the callback will never run. See the Callbacks section for more detail.