react-document-order

Allows React components to contribute to a list that is maintained in the document order of those components. Can be used for example to construct forms with dynamic nested components with rich linking behaviours between neighbouring controls in the sequencial document order rather than in control mount order. Works with standard React for the Web, and with React Native.

Table of contents:

Installation
Usage
Demo Examples
Alternatives
Invitation to Contribute

Installation

npm install --save react-document-order

Usage

Start by calling createOrderedValues() to create a document-ordered collection.

import { RefObject } from 'react'
import { createOrderedValues } from 'react-document-order'

const MyCollection = createOrderedValues<RefObject<HTMLElement>>()

The OrderedValues it returns provides the interface for the library.

import React from 'react'

export interface OrderedValues<T> {
  Provider: React.FunctionComponent<{}>
  useRegister: (value: T) => void

  useValueAfter: (reference: T) => T | null | undefined
  useValueBefore: (reference: T) => T | null | undefined
  useFirst: () => T | null
  useLast: () => T | null
}

Use a Provider around your overall collection.

default export function ReadmeExample() {
  return (
    <MyCollection.Provider>
      <MyFormContent/>
    </MyCollection.Provider>
  )
}

The library assumes that controls are always added at the end of their nearest Provider ancestor, so also put a Provider around any section where items might get dynamically added to your collection.

import { useState } from 'react'

function MyFormContent() {
  const [email, setEmail] = useState("")
  return (
    <div style={{ display: "flex", flexDirection: "column" }}>
      <MyInput label="Name" />
      <MyInput label="Email Address" onChange={setEmail} />
      <MyCollection.Provider>
        {email.endsWith("@example.com") && <MyInput label="Position at Example Corp." />}
      </MyCollection.Provider>
      <MyInput label="Favourite Fruit" />
    </div>
  )
}

Add elements to your collection by calling register().

import { useRef } from 'react'

function MyInput({ label, onChange }: { label: string, onChange?: (value: string) => void }) {
  const ref = useRef<HTMLInputElement>(null)
  MyCollection.useRegister(ref)
  return (
    <input
      placeholder={label}
      onChange={onChange && (e => onChange(e.target.value))}
      ref={ref}
      {...useUpDownBehaviour(ref)}
    />
  )
}

Then you can use the other functions on OrderedValues to your advantage.

import { SyntheticEvent } from 'react'

const useUpDownBehaviour = (ref: RefObject<HTMLElement>) => {
  const previous = MyCollection.useValueBefore(ref)
  const next = MyCollection.useValueAfter(ref)
  return {
    onKeyDownCapture: (e: SyntheticEvent<HTMLElement, KeyboardEvent>) => {
      if (e.nativeEvent.key === "ArrowUp") {
        e.preventDefault();
        previous?.current?.focus()
      } else if (e.nativeEvent.key === "ArrowDown") {
        e.preventDefault();
        next?.current?.focus()
      }
    }
  }
}

Demo Examples

The ReadmeExample is simply the code from the previous section.

The TrivialExample is a minimalistic demonstration that collections plain strings, as opposed to the HTML element refs used in the other examples.

ToDoList shows a fully dynamic hierarchical demo (with an appalling user experience—decent UX is left as an exercise for the reader).

Click here for a live demo of all 3 examples!

They are all displayed in the example app, which you can run from the root directory like this:

yarn build && cd example && yarn install && yarn start

Alternatives

The DOM provides a compareDocumentPosition() method that allows you to understand where two mounted elements stand with respect to one another in the document. This could be used to provide a simpler API, by dispensing with the restriction that elements can only by added at the end of a Provider context, thus making everything work with a single Provider. This would be a DOM-only solution though, so it wouldn't work for React Native. As a React Native use case was the motivator for this library, this approach wasn't taken.

Are there other libraries in existence or implementation approaches we could take? Let me know so I can explore them and list them here as appropriate.

Invitation to Contribute

This library arose out of a strong urge to have a clean implementation of field-to-field linking behaviour in a React Native application, and I need to get back to implementing that application. Meanwhile, the implementation currently has some shortcomings, and there are some obvious operations to implement that I don't currently have a need for and aren't yet implemented. There are also some API improvements that could be made.