htmr

Simple and lightweight HTML to react component converter

Convert HTML string to React component using simple API that works universally in server and browser in a small package (< 2kB minified gzipped)

Install

$ yarn add htmr

# or

$ npm install htmr --save

Usage

Usage is quite straightforward, use the default export, and pass HTML string.

import React from 'react';
import convert from 'htmr';

class Component extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return convert('<p>No more dangerouslySetInnerHTML</p>');
  }
}

The API also accepts second argument options containing few fields

const options = {
  transform: {},
  preserveAttributes: [],
};
convert(html, options);

transform

transform accepts key value object that transforms node (key) to custom component (value). You can use it to render specific tag name with custom component. For example: component with predefined styles such as emotion / styled-components.

import React from 'react';
import convert from 'htmr';
import styled from 'emotion/react';

const Paragraph = styled('p')`
  font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
  line-height: 1.5;
`;

const transform = {
  p: Paragraph,
  // you can also pass string for native DOM node
  span: 'div',
};

class Component extends React.Component {
  render() {
    // will return <Paragraph>{'Custom component'}</Paragraph>
    return convert('<p>Custom component</p>', { transform });
  }
}

You can also provide default transform using underscore _ syntax, similar to pattern matching special fall-through case.

This can be useful if you want to do string preprocessing (like removing all whitespace), or rendering HTML as native view in react-native:

import React from 'react';
import { Text, View } from 'react-native';

let i = 0;

const transform = {
  // react-native uses View instead of div
  div: View,
  _: (node, props, children) => {
    // react-native can't render string without <Text> component
    if (typeof props === 'undefined') {
      // we use auto incrementing key because it's possible that <Text>
      // is rendered inside array as sibling
      return <Text key={i++}>{node}</Text>;
    }

    // render unknown tag using <View>
    // ideally you also filter valid props to <View />
    return <View {...props}>{children}</View>;
  },
};

class NativeHTMLRenderer extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return convert(this.props.html, { transform });
  }
}

preserveAttributes

By default htmr will convert attribute to camelCase version because that's what react uses. You can override this behavior by passing preserveAttributes options. Specify array of string / regular expression to test which attributes you want to preserve.

For example you want to make sure ng-if, v-if and v-for to be rendered as is

convert(html, { preserveAttributes: ['ng-if', new RegExp('v-')] });

Multiple children

You can also convert HTML string which contains multiple elements. This returns an array, so make sure to wrap the output inside other component such as div, or use React 16.

import React from 'react';
import convert from 'htmr';

const html = `
  <h1>This string</h1>
  <p>Contains multiple html tags</p>
  <p>as sibling</p>
`;

class Component extends React.Component {
  render() {
    // if using react 16
    return convert(html);
    // if using react 15 and below
    return <div>{convert(html)}</div>;
  }
}

Use Cases

This library was initially built to provides easy component mapping between HTML string and React component. It's mainly used in my blog to render custom component from HTML string returned from blog API. This library prioritize file size and simple API over full HTML conversion coverage and other features like flexible node traversal.

That's why I've decided to not implement some features (see Trade Off section below). If you feel like you need more features that's not possible using this library, you can check out some related projects below.

Trade Off

• Inline event attributes (onclick="" etc) are not supported due to unnecessary complexity
• htmr use native browser HTML parser when run in browser instead of using custom parser. Due to how browser HTML parser works, you can get weird result if you supply "invalid" html, for example div inside p element like <p><div>text</div></p>
• Script tag is not rendered using dangerouslySetInnerHTML by default due to security. You can opt in by using custom component mapping
• Style tag renders it children using dangerouslySetInnerHTML by default. You can also reverse this behavior using custom mapping.

Related projects

HTML to react element:

• html-to-react
• react-html-parser
• html-react-parser
• react-render-html

HTML (page) to react component (file/string):

• html-to-react-components
• react-magic

License

MIT