/ecology

Documentation generator for collections of react components.

Primary LanguageJavaScriptMIT LicenseMIT

Travis Status Maintenance Status

Ecology

Description

Ecology allows you to write markdown documentation for React components that includes interactive playground sections and auto-generated propType specifications.

See the demo app for a complete example:

# Runs the demo component documentation dev-server
# and open it in your default browser.

$ npm run dev && npm run open-demo

Component PropType Documentation

  1. Your component should be created using React.createClass() or class Foo extends React.Component.
  2. Your component should define propTypes in the createClass object literal or as a static property of the class.
  3. Your component may define default props as getDefaultProps method (React.createClass() syntax), or as a defaultProps static property of the class.
  4. You should add a JSDoc-style comment block for each prop, with a description and optional @examples.
// createClass() example
const MyComponent = React.createClass({
  propTypes: {
    /**
     * A test prop
     * @examples "Test", "More Test", "Yep"
     */
    testProp: React.PropTypes.string
  },

  render() {
    return <div>Sample</div>;
  }
});

// class declaration example
// NOTE: Requires `babel-preset-stage-1`
class MyComponent extends React.Component {
  static propTypes = {
    /**
     * A test prop
     * @examples "Test", "More Test", "Yep"
     */
    testProp: React.PropTypes.string
  };

  render() {
    return <div>Sample</div>;
  }
}

Writing Your Component Documentation

Create these files according to the below examples:

  • docs/docs.jsx
  • docs/ecology.md
  • docs/index.html
  • docs/webpack.config.js
  1. Create docs/docs.jsx
// docs.jsx

import React from "react";
import ReactDOM from "react-dom";
import Ecology from "ecology";
import * as docgen from "react-docgen";

import MyComponent from "../src/my-component";

class Docs extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div className="demo">
        <Ecology
          // This loads up your markdown documentation.
          overview={require("!!raw!./ecology.md")}

          // This loads up your component source so Ecology can inject the `propType` table.
          source={docgen.parse(require("!!raw!../src/my-component"))}

          // The `scope` prop is used by Component Playground to render live code snippets.
          // It needs React, ReactDOM, and your component.
          // See https://github.com/FormidableLabs/component-playground#scope
          scope={{ React, ReactDOM, MyComponent }}
          playgroundtheme="blackboard"
        />
      </div>
    );
  }
}

ReactDOM.render(<Docs/>, document.getElementById("content"));
  1. Create docs/ecology.md:

     // ecology.md
    
     Interactive Docs for My Component
     =================================
    
     PlayGround
     ----------
    
     A `playground` triple-backtick snippet will render your component for you. This is useful for quick interactive component demos without the need to add boilerplate.
    
     ```playground
     <MyComponent />
     ```
    
     NoRender Playground
     -------------------
    
     A `playground_norender` triple-backtick snippet will not do automatic rendering of your component; you have to manually call `ReactDom.render`. Useful for examples of using your component in context.
    
     ```playground_norender
     var App = React.createClass({
       render() {
           return (
           <MyComponent />
           );
         }
     })
    
     ReactDOM.render(<App/>, mountNode);
     ```
    
     ## Prop Types
    
     Ecology will inject a `propTypes` table at the bottom of your component docs. This is generated from the component `propTypes` definition, and takes into account JSDoc style comments for each `propType`
    
  2. Create docs/index.html

// index.html
// Minimal example. See `demo/index.html` for an example with fallbacks for older browsers.

<!doctype html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>Ecology Demo</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/codemirror/5.0.0/codemirror.min.css"/>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/codemirror/5.0.0/theme/blackboard.min.css"/>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="content"></div>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/codemirror/5.0.0/codemirror.min.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/codemirror/5.0.0/mode/javascript/javascript.min.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="main.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>
  1. Create docs/webpack.config.js
// webpack.config.js
module.exports = {
  devServer: {
    contentBase: __dirname,
    noInfo: false
  },
  output: {
    path: __dirname,
    filename: "main.js",
    publicPath: "/"
  },
  devtool: "source-map",
  entry: {
    app: ["./docs/docs.jsx"]
  },
  resolve: {
    extensions: ["", ".js", ".jsx"]
  },
  module: {
    loaders: [
      {
        test: /\.jsx?$/,
        loader: "babel-loader",
        query: {
          presets: ["es2015", "react"]
        },
        exclude: /node_modules/
      }
    ]
  }
};
  1. Install dependencies and run webpack-dev-server
$ npm install -S babel babel-core babel-preset-es2015 babel-preset-react babel-loader raw-loader ecology react react-dom react-docgen webpack webpack-dev-server
$ node_modules/.bin/webpack-dev-server --port 3000 --config docs/webpack.config.js --watch --content-base docs

Required Props

  • Overview - Markdown documentation file in raw/string format
  • Source - React class source file in parsed react-docgen format
  • Scope - Scope for component-playground components. Used by Component Playground to render live code snippets. It needs React, ReactDOM, and your component.

Optional Props

  • customRenderers - Pass an object with custom marked renderer methods. ex link: function(href, title, text) {return href}. A list of available elements is available here. Note: Method must return a string.
  • exportGist - Adds a button to export the playground source as an anonymous Gist on Github. Enabling this adds a Toolbar component to the markup, with a Button-GistExport component and Toolbar-Message area for displaying error messages.
  • copyToClipboard - Adds a button to copy the playground source to the clipboard. Enabling this adds a Toolbar component to the markup, with a Button-Clipboard component.

Deploying Your Docs

Help us write this documentation! #20

Development

Please see DEVELOPMENT

Contributing

Please see CONTRIBUTING

Maintenance Status

Archived: This project is no longer maintained by Formidable. We are no longer responding to issues or pull requests unless they relate to security concerns. We encourage interested developers to fork this project and make it their own!