How to use react-router

[pmendelski]

Please could you specify how to use react-router with react-toolbox? It's related with #984 .

Seems that right now it's not possible without creating a lot of glue code. No way to setup the typical routing behavior for a Single Page Applications is a major drawback.

Possible solutions:

• Create a documentation showing how to do it without breaking any feature or styling of react-toolbox
• Create a possibility to configure behavior for all components that behave like links
• Create react-toolbox-router that solves all router-related problems

[pmendelski]

There is a lot of code to be copied to integrate with react-router. See: https://github.com/borela/react-toolbox-plus-router

[pmendelski]

Using HOC breaks the styling.

Example:

  <List selectable ripple>
    <ListItem caption="Undecorated ListItem" to="/about" />
    <DecoratedListItem caption="Decorated ListItem" to="/about"  />
  </List>

DecoratedListItem - has no hover effect.

[javivelasco]

In that case, you are decorating a ListItem component that is a dependency of List component. This is happening because the List is not able to see the children anymore so you have two different options to solve this:

• Create a new List component by dependency injection of the new decorated ListItem.
• Decorate a different component such as a Link and using it as a descendant of ListItem component.

[javivelasco]

I'm keeping this open to bring the example to the docs

[pmendelski]

Thanks for prompt response.

• Creating new List component just to have proper links does not sound as a good solution.
• Using ListItem with decorated Link again breaks the style. Only clicking the text inside the link triggers routing change. It cannot be solved by simple style rule.

See:

<List selectable ripple>
    <ListItem caption="ListItem" to="/about" />
    <ListItem>
      <ReactToolboxLink to="/about">DecortedLink</ReactToolboxLink>
    </ListItem>
  </List>

[javivelasco]

It looks more like a styling issue in the second case you mentioned. Check the code and add a className to expand the anchor in the whole container element.

I'm curious about why the first one doesn't sound good to you. Think about ListItem as a dependency of List. If you change the child, you have to tell the parent in order to identify it and inject what's needed. Another alternative is to standardize a property to tell a parent component the possible types of children where it should inject extra properties.

[pmendelski]

Adding class or style to expand link does not solve the problem. Because anchor element is wrapped in spans that are not full width. Those spans come from ListItem. To make it full width I would need to create a custom ListItem and List.

Example:

  <List selectable ripple>
    <ListItem caption="ListItem" to="/about" />
    <ListItem>
      <ReactToolboxLink style={{ width: '100%' }} to="/about">DecortedLink</ReactToolboxLink>
    </ListItem>
  </List>

Result:

<li class="theme__listItem___30lng ">
  <span class="theme__item___3W21r theme__item___3W21r theme__selectable___sCYtG theme__selectable___sCYtG">
    <span class="theme__left___z7gaI theme__left___z7gaI theme__left___z7gaI">
      <span class="theme__itemAction___3bE-p theme__itemAction___3bE-p theme__itemAction___3bE-p theme__itemAction___3bE-p">
        <a style="width: 100%;" href="/about">DecortedLink</a>
      </span>
    </span>
    <span class="theme__itemContentRoot___2rUlN theme__itemContentRoot___2rUlN theme__itemContentRoot___2rUlN"></span>
  </span>
</li>

[pmendelski]

I find creating new List component, not the most elegant solution because it would break the DRY principle. It's a lot of copy-pasting for such a basic need.

Selectable property is a presentation only feature (correct?). Maybe it could be solved by a simple css rule on the List component that applies hover effect on its children?

[pmendelski]

BTW, please take into consideration that simply decorating components breaks styling not only in ListItem. Please see #984 (comment)

The main issue are themes, the only way to have it fully working "out of the box" was to clone the current code for the button, iconbutton, link and make minor changes

[javivelasco]

It is not breaking DRY if you wrap for component for every List in your project. The issue is not that simple, let me explain it a little.

There are some components that set a context to its children and they manage them by injecting new properties or modifying them in some way. The case of List is simple: when a list is selectable , a selectable property is passed down. As far as I remember it is only used for styling purposes but changing it would not work in a future approach I have in mind. About this, one of the most common issues is that selectors are too specific. The best case is to have a single className per node with some modifier classnames. For this use case the classname is listItem and the modifier selectable.

The thing is that the List component needs to identify its children. Right now you can tell the List component that the ListItem is your custom in the factory function initialized internally by react-toolbox. You are free to create a custom-rt/List or even to do some magic with webpack to replace the List project wide with a custom that allows to pass item options to decorated children.

I find a better solution for this cases to add a prop in the list so you can tell it with itemComponents={[ ListItem, CustomListItem ]} so they are treated the same. What branch are you using atm?

[javivelasco]

I'm actively working on the css-next branch. If you find it useful we can add a property to the List component to allow this along with the decorator which would be included in react-toolbox/lib/hoc/withReactRouter. What do you think?

[pmendelski]

Hi, thanks for such a comprehensive answer.

I get your concern. selectable is just an example of a presentation property. In other composite components there are other properties that must be also passed to their children.

What is the perfect solution?
IMHO the perfect solution look like:

  <List selectable>
    <ListItem>
      <Link to="/about">Simple Link from react-router or any other library</Link>
    </ListItem>
  </List>

This way the List can operate on ListItems and react-toolbox can be used with any other routing library. The problem is that this solution breaks the styling. Maybe we could just fix the styling issue for ListItem and all the other components (Button, MenuItem, Link)?

P.S.
I'm using react-toolbox v1.3.1.

[pmendelski]

One more thing. Please don't get me wrong. Thanks for react-toolbox :) It is the best library with material components I found.

[pmendelski]

• I wouldn't add itemComponents property. It exposes internal logic of List component.
• I wouldn't add withReactRouter. It couples react-toolbox with react-router.