Backstitch

Back stitch is a popular stitch used for seams to give them strength & durability.

tl;dr

A simple wrapper pattern for react frameworks, including Material UI

It's nothing new to developers, but here's a project to quickly bootstrap your project with component wrappers (sometimes called the adapter pattern).

What we get with it

• Easily replace one library with another (eg replace Material-ui with Bootstrap), and keep the same Component API throughout your app
• Quicker app setup inside whichever starter you want (CRA, Next, etc)
• Quickly generate new UI component wrappers with Hygen
• Quickly generate all of our UI components with a single shell command
• Consistently style throughout our app.
• DRYer code

Eg. Switch every Button in our app from contained to outlined with a single line of code:

<Button 
+   variant='outlined'
-   variant='contained'
/>

What it's not

• Backstitch is not a npm library - it's boilerplate code to clone the code into your project, and code from there

Features

• ✔ Easily plug and play with Material UI (currently v4.10.1) ☐ (Bootstrap and more to come! Contributions welcome)
• ✔ StoryBook
• ✔ Built-in unit testing - WIP ☐ Cypress ☐ React Testing Library
• ✔ Styled components (which can be easily switched) ☐ Easily switched for css-modules ☐ Switched for emotion
• ✔ TypeScript

But why?

Imports Before Backstitch

import React from 'react';
import AppBar from '@material-ui/core/AppBar';
import Toolbar from '@material-ui/core/Toolbar';
import Typography from '@material-ui/core/Typography';
import Button from '@material-ui/core/Button';
import IconButton from '@material-ui/core/IconButton';
import MenuIcon from '@material-ui/icons/Menu';

Imports After Backstitch

import React from 'react';
import { AppBar, Toolbar, Typography, Button, IconButton, MenuIcon } from 'common/ui';

Refactor reused components themselves using your own pattern and defaults

Before refactor

example from Material-ui buttons minus style

export default function IconLabelButtons() {
    ...
    <Button
        variant="contained"
        disabled
        color="secondary"
        className={classes.button}
        startIcon={<KeyboardVoiceIcon />}
    >
        Talk
    </Button>
};

After refactor

export default function IconLabelButtons() {
    ...
    <Button
        disabled
        startIcon={<KeyboardVoiceIcon />}
    >
        Talk
    </Button>
}

Getting Started

Here's how you can quickly boostrap with Create React App (CRA)

npx create-react-app MyApp  --template typescript
cd MyApp

1. Clone Backstitch

Clone backstitch into the ./src/common folder of your app:

git clone git@github.com:tgrrr/backstitch.git src/common/

Using Git Submodules (optional)

mkdir -p src/common/
cd src/common/
git submodule add https://github.com/tgrrr/backstitch
git submodule update --init --recursive
cd ../..

Important: Running git fetch inside of the submodule folder (rather than your root) will over-ride your local changes inside the common/ui folder.

If you want to disable this, and miss out on any updates, just run:

// warning: dangerous command ahead:
rm -rf /src/common/.gitignore

rm -rf is a dangerous command itself, my uncle's friend's daughter lost their entire PHD using it, so be careful!

If you're wary, you might want to check out git subtree instead.

2. TypeScript setup for React

Add typescript to your project:

yarn add -D typescript @types/node @types/react @types/react-dom @types/jest

Add material-ui to your tsconfig.json file

{
    "compilerOptions": {
+       "types": ["material-ui"]
    }
}

3. Add the dependencies

yarn add -D @storybook/react babel-loader

4. Setup Storybook

StoryBook

[Install StoryBook to your project

add the following scripts to your package.json:

    "storybook": "start-storybook",
    "storybook:build": "build-storybook -c .storybook -o .out",

then:

yarn run storybook

View your stories at http://localhost:9009

5. Write your first component

import React from 'react';
import { Button } from 'common/ui';

const Foo = () => <Button>Foo who?</Button>;

export default const Foo;

OR Add your component to your App.js file:

import React from 'react';
import { Button } from 'common/ui';

function App() {
  return (
    <div className="App">
      <header className="App-header">
        header
      </header>
      <Button>Foo who?</Button>
    </div>
  );
}

export default App;

6. Delete the unused components

Depending on how you've setup Webpack, we want to keep your bundle size small. There's quite a few components, and you wont need all of them. So delete the ones you don't need. You can always cherrypick them later.

To learn more, see: Minimising bundle size with tree shaking

7. That's it!

At the moment, the components are just set up to let Material-ui deal with the props

Eg.

import * as React from 'react';
import InputStyled from './InputStyled';
import MaterialInput, {
    InputProps as MaterialInputProps,
} from '@material-ui/core/Input';

interface Props
    extends MaterialInputProps
        // Uncomment these lines to disable the InputProps props:
        // , Omit<
        // MaterialInputProps,
        // | 'propToDisable1'
        // | 'propToDisable2'
        // > 
    {
    className?: string;
}

const Input: React.FC<Props> = ({ className, ...rest }) => (
    <InputStyled>
        <div className={['Input', className && className].join(' ')} data-testid='Input'>
            <MaterialInput {...rest} />
        </div>
    </InputStyled>
);

export default Input;

This isn't my favourite pattern, it's better to be more explicit by declaring exactly which props we want to include (or exclude using Omit).

As you customise each component, it's a good idea to remove any props being passed with {...rest}, and limit it to the props that we know that we'll need.

---

Generating custom components on the fly

We're using Hygen to template quickly

Usage

Replace NAME with the component you want to create

Note: ensure you get your CamelCase right!

Generate UI components with Yarn

From the home directory (containing your package.json)

$ yarn hygen:ui ui new --name NAME [--stateful] [--functional]

> yarn run v1.22.0
> $ HYGEN_TMPLS=src/common-ui/_templates hygen component new --name NAME > --functional
>
> Loaded templates: src/common-ui/_templates
>        added: src/common/ui/NAME/NAME.story.js
>        added: src/common/ui/NAME/NAME.test.js
>        added: src/common/ui/NAME/index.js
> ✨  Done in 0.38s.

$ yarn hygen ui new --name NAME [--stateful] [--functional]

Note: there's an example in common/.config/.package.json

Eg. Generate a new Material-UI button component

If you want a slightly different template than I've used, you're in luck.

1. Customise the src/common/_templates/ui/new/component.js.t file the way you want it.

2. Generate a new button

$ yarn hygen ui new --name Button

> yarn run v1.22.4
> $ HYGEN_TMPLS=src/common/_templates hygen ui new --name Button
>
> Loaded templates: src/common/_templates
>        added: src/common/ui/Button/Button.tsx
>        added: src/common/ui/Button/index.ts
>       inject: src/common/ui/index.ts
>       inject: src/common/ui/index.ts
>        added: src/common/ui/Button/ButtonStyled.tsx
>        added: src/common/ui/Button/Button.stories.tsx
>        added: src/common/ui/Button/Button.test.js
> new:
> - hygen ui new --name NAME

3. That's it!

Generating multiple components quickly

It's possible to batch generate all of the @material-ui/core components using the ./hygen-bash.sh script

1. Customise the src/common/_templates/ui/new/component.js.t file the way you want it (the same as we do inGenerate UI components with Yarn)

Edit the ./hygen-bash.sh script to only include the material-ui components you want to include

$ nano hygen-bash.sh

declare -a arr=(
    "Button"
    ...
    "Card"
)

Then from your home directory run the hygen-bash.sh script:

$ ./src/common/hygen-bash.sh

$ HYGEN_TMPLS=src/common/_templates hygen ui new --name Button

Loaded templates: src/common/_templates
       added: src/common/ui/Button/Button.tsx
       added: src/common/ui/Button/index.ts
      inject: src/common/ui/index.ts
      inject: src/common/ui/index.ts
       added: src/common/ui/Button/ButtonStyled.tsx
       added: src/common/ui/Button/Button.stories.tsx
       added: src/common/ui/Button/Button.test.js
new:
- hygen ui new --name NAME

✨  Done in 0.58s.
Card
yarn run v1.22.4
$ HYGEN_TMPLS=src/common/_templates hygen ui new --name Card

Loaded templates: src/common/_templates
       added: src/common/ui/Card/Card.tsx
       added: src/common/ui/Card/index.ts
      inject: src/common/ui/index.ts
      inject: src/common/ui/index.ts
       added: src/common/ui/Card/CardStyled.tsx
       added: src/common/ui/Card/Card.stories.tsx
       added: src/common/ui/Card/Card.test.js
new:
- hygen ui new --name NAME

✨  Done in 1.38s.

Kudos

• Hygen CRA
• Hygen

How to contribute

Here's the current todo list

Use Semantic commit messages

Eg.

• chore: add Oyster build script
• docs: explain hat wobble
• feat: add beta sequence
• fix: remove broken confirmation message
• refactor: share logic between 4d3d3d3 and flarhgunnstow
• style: convert tabs to spaces
• test: ensure Tayne retains clothing