So I’m building a Nuxt app for working with docs (in a broad sense), and it will have a menu, which I will obviously make a component. The menu will be home to lots of actions on the doc itself, such as opening/saving files, editing, etc. etc.
I know the standard way to pass info from a component to its parent (the doc vm in this case) is via messages, but it feels like a bit of an overkill, what with the syntax (emit handlers just don’t feel natural to me in this case) and whatnot.
For this reason I was wondering why can’t I just pass the parent vm as a prop to the menu component? It will contain all kinds of methods, and I will be able to easily invoke them via the menu. Something like:
Parent (Document.vue):
<template>
<main-menu :document='vm'/>
</template>
<script>
import MainMenu from '~/components/MainMenu.vue'
export default {
data(): {
return {
vm: this,
//...
}
},
methods: {
save() {
//...
}
}
//...
</script>
Menu component (MainMenu.vue):
<template>
<button #click='document.save()'>Save document</button>
</template>
<script>
export default {
props = ['document']
}
</script>
The question: Is there something intrinsically bad in this approach?
(I imagine this could be problematic if the app architecture could change, but it’s hard to imagine that I would for some reason need a menu without an underlying document.)
IF your Menu is always the child of the component, then you don't have to pass your parent. It is already held in a Vue variable called this.$parent.
I made a little sandbox to give you an example.
The parent has a function, for example:
/// PARENT
export default {
name: "App",
components: {
HelloWorld,
},
methods: {
iExist(add) {
console.log("I am in parent" + add);
},
},
};
Then you can call it from child with this.$parent.iExist('something').
Since this.$parent is not defined when the template is being evaluated, we have to make a method in the child as well, to call(super) the corresponding function on it's parent.
/// CHILD
<template>
<div class="hello">
<h1>{{ msg }}</h1>
<button #click="iExist(', but was called from child')">Click Me</button>
</div>
</template>
<script>
export default {
name: "HelloWorld",
props: {
msg: String,
},
methods: {
iExist(add) {
this.$parent.iExist(add);
},
},
};
</script>
The question: Is there something intrinsically bad in this approach?
(I imagine this could be problematic if the app architecture could change, but it’s hard to imagine that I would for some reason need a menu without an underlying document.)
Yes, this is bad design. Parents can be aware of children, children shouldn't be aware of parents. A child could be tested in isolation, or be nested inside wrapper component that doesn't have this method.
As another answer suggests, a way to access a parent is to use $parent property. This part was borrowed in Vue from AngularJS 1.x, accessing it was considered a bad practice even then.
This is generally achieved by providing a callback from a parent that does exactly a desired thing, without allowing to access the whole instance and break the encapsulation. It's unnecessary to explicitly define callback function in Vue because this is naturally provided by Vue template syntax:
In a parent:
<child #save="save()">
In a child:
<button #click="$emit('save')">
In case of deeply nested components the event can be passed through them to a parent.
I am trying to show a loading indicator which is located inside of a component that contains a slot element (lets call this the wrapper component). To do this, I have a function inside the wrapper that sets the state of the indicator based on an input boolean (setSpinnerVisible()). Now, I would like to execute this function from the component that uses this wrapper. To do this, in the parent component I use the v-slot property to get a reference to the function. I would like to be able to call this function inside the mounted() function, or from a function within methods.
However, I am not able to figure out how to do this. The only way I can think of is by passing this v-slot value into a function that is executed on an event like a button press, which works, but I also want to be able to call this method from a function that is not executed by an action in the layout (e.g. in the mounted() function).
This is (a part of) my wrapper component (the function that toggles the spinner is left out for brevity):
<template>
<slot v-bind:setSpinnerVisible="setSpinnerVisible"></slot>
...
<div class="spinner" v-show="spinnerVisible"></div>
</template>
This is (a part of) the component that uses the wrapper:
<Wrapper v-slot="{ setSpinnerVisible }">
...
</Wrapper>
I would like to be able to use the value of setSpinnerVisible inside the mounted function in one way or another, something like this fictional piece of code:
<script>
export default {
mounted() {
this.setSpinnerVisible(true)
}
}
</script>
I am using Vue 2.6.11
There are several approaches you could take.
For example, you could access the parent instance and call the method you need:
this.$parent.setSpinnerVisible()
Alternatively, you could create a gateway component that uses the Wrapper, gets setSpinnerVisible and passes it as a prop to the component that needs it.
You can use dependency injection. Described here: https://v2.vuejs.org/v2/guide/components-edge-cases.html#Dependency-Injection
So, in Wrapper.vue
<template>
...
</template>
<script>
export default {
provide () {
return {
setSpinnerVisible: this.setSpinnerVisible
}
}
}
</script>
And in your child component:
<Wrapper>
...
</Wrapper>
<script>
export default {
inject: ['setSpinnerVisible'],
mounted() {
this.setSpinnerVisible(true)
}
}
</script>
The last one would be my recommended approach because it's much neater and is not anti-pattern.
In this example, I have this react class:
class MyDiv extends React.component
constructor(){
this.state={sampleState:'hello world'}
}
render(){
return <div>{this.state.sampleState}
}
}
The question is if I can add React hooks to this. I understand that React-Hooks is alternative to React Class style. But if I wish to slowly migrate into React hooks, can I add useful hooks into Classes?
High order components are how we have been doing this type of thing until hooks came along. You can write a simple high order component wrapper for your hook.
function withMyHook(Component) {
return function WrappedComponent(props) {
const myHookValue = useMyHook();
return <Component {...props} myHookValue={myHookValue} />;
}
}
While this isn't truly using a hook directly from a class component, this will at least allow you to use the logic of your hook from a class component, without refactoring.
class MyComponent extends React.Component {
render(){
const myHookValue = this.props.myHookValue;
return <div>{myHookValue}</div>;
}
}
export default withMyHook(MyComponent);
Class components don't support hooks -
According to the Hooks-FAQ:
You can’t use Hooks inside of a class component, but you can definitely mix classes and function components with Hooks in a single tree. Whether a component is a class or a function that uses Hooks is an implementation detail of that component. In the longer term, we expect Hooks to be the primary way people write React components.
As other answers already explain, hooks API was designed to provide function components with functionality that currently is available only in class components. Hooks aren't supposed to used in class components.
Class components can be written to make easier a migration to function components.
With a single state:
class MyDiv extends Component {
state = {sampleState: 'hello world'};
render(){
const { state } = this;
const setState = state => this.setState(state);
return <div onClick={() => setState({sampleState: 1})}>{state.sampleState}</div>;
}
}
is converted to
const MyDiv = () => {
const [state, setState] = useState({sampleState: 'hello world'});
return <div onClick={() => setState({sampleState: 1})}>{state.sampleState}</div>;
}
Notice that useState state setter doesn't merge state properties automatically, this should be covered with setState(prevState => ({ ...prevState, foo: 1 }));
With multiple states:
class MyDiv extends Component {
state = {sampleState: 'hello world'};
render(){
const { sampleState } = this.state;
const setSampleState = sampleState => this.setState({ sampleState });
return <div onClick={() => setSampleState(1)}>{sampleState}</div>;
}
}
is converted to
const MyDiv = () => {
const [sampleState, setSampleState] = useState('hello world');
return <div onClick={() => setSampleState(1)}>{sampleState}</div>;
}
Complementing Joel Cox's good answer
Render Props also enable the usage of Hooks inside class components, if more flexibility is needed:
class MyDiv extends React.Component {
render() {
return (
<HookWrapper
// pass state/props from inside of MyDiv to Hook
someProp={42}
// process Hook return value
render={hookValue => <div>Hello World! {hookValue}</div>}
/>
);
}
}
function HookWrapper({ someProp, render }) {
const hookValue = useCustomHook(someProp);
return render(hookValue);
}
For side effect Hooks without return value:
function HookWrapper({ someProp }) {
useCustomHook(someProp);
return null;
}
// ... usage
<HookWrapper someProp={42} />
Source: React Training
you can achieve this by generic High order components
HOC
import React from 'react';
const withHook = (Component, useHook, hookName = 'hookvalue') => {
return function WrappedComponent(props) {
const hookValue = useHook();
return <Component {...props} {...{[hookName]: hookValue}} />;
};
};
export default withHook;
Usage
class MyComponent extends React.Component {
render(){
const myUseHookValue = this.props.myUseHookValue;
return <div>{myUseHookValue}</div>;
}
}
export default withHook(MyComponent, useHook, 'myUseHookValue');
Hooks are not meant to be used for classes but rather functions. If you wish to use hooks, you can start by writing new code as functional components with hooks
According to React FAQs
You can’t use Hooks inside of a class component, but you can
definitely mix classes and function components with Hooks in a single
tree. Whether a component is a class or a function that uses Hooks is
an implementation detail of that component. In the longer term, we
expect Hooks to be the primary way people write React components.
const MyDiv = () => {
const [sampleState, setState] = useState('hello world');
render(){
return <div>{sampleState}</div>
}
}
You can use the react-universal-hooks library. It lets you use the "useXXX" functions within the render function of class-components.
It's worked great for me so far. The only issue is that since it doesn't use the official hooks, the values don't show react-devtools.
To get around this, I created an equivalent by wrapping the hooks, and having them store their data (using object-mutation to prevent re-renders) on component.state.hookValues. (you can access the component by auto-wrapping the component render functions, to run set currentCompBeingRendered = this)
For more info on this issue (and details on the workaround), see here: https://github.com/salvoravida/react-universal-hooks/issues/7
Stateful components or containers or class-based components ever support the functions of React Hooks, so we don't need to React Hooks in Stateful components just in stateless components.
Some additional informations
What are React Hooks?
So what are hooks? Well hooks are a new way or offer us a new way of writing our components.
Thus far, of course we have functional and class-based components, right? Functional components receive props and you return some JSX code that should be rendered to the screen.
They are great for presentation, so for rendering the UI part, not so much about the business logic and they are typically focused on one or a few purposes per component.
Class-based components on the other hand also will receive props but they also have this internal state. Therefore class-based components are the components which actually hold the majority of our business logic, so with business logic, I mean things like we make an HTTP request and we need to handle the response and to change the internal state of the app or maybe even without HTTP. A user fills out the form and we want to show this somewhere on the screen, we need state for this, we need class-based components for this and therefore we also typically use class based components to orchestrate our other components and pass our state down as props to functional components for example.
Now one problem we have with this separation, with all the benefits it adds but one problem we have is that converting from one component form to the other is annoying. It's not really difficult but it is annoying.
If you ever found yourself in a situation where you needed to convert a functional component into a class-based one, it's a lot of typing and a lot of typing of always the same things, so it's annoying.
A bigger problem in quotation marks is that lifecycle hooks can be hard to use right.
Obviously, it's not hard to add componentDidMount and execute some code in there but knowing which lifecycle hook to use, when and how to use it correctly, that can be challenging especially in more complex applications and anyways, wouldn't it be nice if we had one way of creating components and that super component could then handle both state and side effects like HTTP requests and also render the user interface?
Well, this is exactly what hooks are all about. Hooks give us a new way of creating functional components and that is important.
React Hooks let you use react features and lifecycle without writing a class.
It's like the equivalent version of the class component with much smaller and readable form factor. You should migrate to React hooks because it's fun to write it.
But you can't write react hooks inside a class component, as it's introduced for functional component.
This can be easily converted to :
class MyDiv extends React.component
constructor(){
this.state={sampleState:'hello world'}
}
render(){
return <div>{this.state.sampleState}
}
}
const MyDiv = () => {
const [sampleState, setSampleState] = useState('hello world');
return <div>{sampleState}</div>
}
It won't be possible with your existing class components. You'll have to convert your class component into a functional component and then do something on the lines of -
function MyDiv() {
const [sampleState, setSampleState] = useState('hello world');
return (
<div>{sampleState}</div>
)
}
For me React.createRef() was helpful.
ex.:
constructor(props) {
super(props);
this.myRef = React.createRef();
}
...
<FunctionComponent ref={this.myRef} />
Origin post here.
I've made a library for this. React Hookable Component.
Usage is very simple. Replace extends Component or extends PureComponent with extends HookableComponent or extends HookablePureComponent. You can then use hooks in the render() method.
import { HookableComponent } from 'react-hookable-component';
// 👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇
class ComponentThatUsesHook extends HookableComponent<Props, State> {
render() {
// 👇👇👇👇👇👇
const value = useSomeHook();
return <span>The value is {value}</span>;
}
}
if you didn't need to change your class component then create another functional component and do hook stuff and import it to class component
Doesn't work anymore in modern React Versions. Took me forever, but finally resulted going back to go ol' callbacks. Only thing that worked for me, all other's threw the know React Hook Call (outside functional component) error.
Non-React or React Context:
class WhateverClass {
private xyzHook: (XyzHookContextI) | undefined
public setHookAccessor (xyzHook: XyzHookContextI): void {
this.xyzHook = xyzHook
}
executeHook (): void {
const hookResult = this.xyzHook?.specificHookFunction()
...
}
}
export const Whatever = new WhateverClass() // singleton
Your hook (or your wrapper for an external Hook)
export interface XyzHookContextI {
specificHookFunction: () => Promise<string>
}
const XyzHookContext = createContext<XyzHookContextI>(undefined as any)
export function useXyzHook (): XyzHookContextI {
return useContext(XyzHookContextI)
}
export function XyzHook (props: PropsWithChildren<{}>): JSX.Element | null {
async function specificHookFunction (): Promise<void> {
...
}
const context: XyzHookContextI = {
specificHookFunction
}
// and here comes the magic in wiring that hook up with the non function component context via callback
Whatever.setHookAccessor(context)
return (
< XyzHookContext.Provider value={context}>
{props.children}
</XyzHookContext.Provider>
)
}
Voila, now you can use ANY react code (via hook) from any other context (class components, vanilla-js, …)!
(…hope I didn't make to many name change mistakes :P)
Yes, but not directly.
Try react-iifc, more details in its readme.
https://github.com/EnixCoda/react-iifc
Try with-component-hooks:
https://github.com/bplok20010/with-component-hooks
import withComponentHooks from 'with-component-hooks';
class MyComponent extends React.Component {
render(){
const props = this.props;
const [counter, set] = React.useState(0);
//TODO...
}
}
export default withComponentHooks(MyComponent)
2.Try react-iifc： https://github.com/EnixCoda/react-iifc
I have the following component, my component correctly displays the message from appState but when I change the value of appState the component isn't updated. I know I need to add an #observer, but how do you add it to a LitElement?
import { LitElement, html } from 'lit-element';
import { observable } from "mobx";
var appState = observable({
message: 'World'
});
class MyElement extends LitElement {
handleClick() {
appState.message = 'All';
}
render(){
return html`
<p>Hello, ${appState.message}</p>
<button #click=${this.handleClick}>Click me</button>
`;
}
}
customElements.define('my-element', MyElement);
LitElement itself is not such a good fit for mobx as changes which trigger a render need to be "full changes". Changing a property of an object is still the same object instance e.g. it will not trigger a render.
You can read the full story at https://open-wc.org/faq/rerender.html
You probably could use mobx autorun to trigger this.updateComplete() to force rerender but in that case, it's probably better to use a specialised lit-element version like https://github.com/adobe/lit-mobx.
Alternatively, a state machine could be a good fit in many cases as well. Take a look at https://www.npmjs.com/package/lit-robot.
prior to posting this question, I tried to search in sqa stackexchange but I found no post about shallow and render there, so I hope someone can help me out here.
When should I use shallow and render in testing react components?
Based on the airbnb docs, I've made some opinions on the difference of the two:
Since shallow is testing components as a unit, so it should be used for 'parent' components. (ex. Tables, Wrappers, etc.)
Render is for child components.
The reason I asked this question, is that I'm having a hard time to figure out which one I should use (though the docs say that they're very similar)
So, how do I know which one to use in a specific scenario?
As per the Enzyme docs:
mount(<Component />) for Full DOM rendering is ideal for use cases where you have components that may interact with DOM apis, or may require the full lifecycle in order to fully test the component (ie, componentDidMount etc.)
vs.
shallow(<Component />) for Shallow rendering is useful to constrain yourself to testing a component as a unit, and to ensure that your tests aren't indirectly asserting on behavior of child components.
vs.
render which is used to render react components to static HTML and analyze the resulting HTML structure.
You can still see the underlying "nodes" in a shallow render, so for example, you can do something like this (slightly contrived) example using AVA as the spec runner:
let wrapper = shallow(<TagBox />);
const props = {
toggleValue: sinon.spy()
};
test('it should render two top level nodes', t => {
t.is(wrapper.children().length, 2);
});
test('it should safely set all props and still render two nodes', t => {
wrapper.setProps({...props});
t.is(wrapper.children().length, 2);
});
test('it should call toggleValue when an x class is clicked', t => {
wrapper.setProps({...props});
wrapper.find('.x').last().simulate('click');
t.true(props.toggleValue.calledWith(3));
});
Notice that rendering, setting props and finding selectors and even synthetic events are all supported by shallow rendering, so most times you can just use that.
But, you won't be able to get the full lifecycle of the component, so if you expect things to happen in componentDidMount, you should use mount(<Component />);
This test uses Sinon to spy on the component's componentDidMount
test.only('mount calls componentDidMount', t => {
class Test extends Component {
constructor (props) {
super(props);
}
componentDidMount() {
console.log('componentDidMount!');
}
render () {
return (
<div />
);
}
};
const componentDidMount = sinon.spy(Test.prototype, 'componentDidMount');
const wrapper = mount(<Test />);
t.true(componentDidMount.calledOnce);
componentDidMount.restore();
});
The above will not pass with shallow rendering or render
render will provide you with the html only, so you can still do stuff like this:
test.only('render works', t => {
// insert Test component here...
const rendered = render(<Test />);
const len = rendered.find('div').length;
t.is(len, 1);
});
The difference between shallow() and mount() is that
shallow() tests components in isolation from the child components they render while mount()goes deeper and tests a component's children.
For shallow() this means that if the parent component renders another component that fails to render, then a shallow() rendering on the parent will still pass.