/react-notion-x

Fast and accurate React renderer for Notion. TS batteries included. ⚡️

Primary LanguageTypeScriptMIT LicenseMIT

React Notion X

React Notion X

Fast and accurate React renderer for Notion. TS batteries included. ⚡️

NPM Build Status Prettier Code Formatting NPM

Contents

Advice

If you just want to publish a website using Notion, then we highly recommend using Super.so — a hosted solution with great perf that takes care of all the details for you.

If you want more control over your website via React, then we recommend checking out the accompanying Next.js starter kit, which is free and uses react-notion-x under the hood.

And if you want even more control, then you're in the right place! 👇👇

Features

  • 🚀 Simple - TypeScript + React
  • ⚡ Fast - 10-100x faster than Notion
    • 95-100% Lighthouse scores
    • Heavier components can be loaded lazily via next/dynamic
  • 💯 Tests - Comes with a comprehensive test suite covering most of Notion's functionality
  • 🔥 Solid - Used in production by Potion and thousands of websites
  • 💪 Smooth - Supports next/image along with LQIP preview images (demo)
  • Framework agnostic - Use with next.js, create-react-app, gatsby, etc

Usage

First you'll want to fetch the content for a Notion page:

import { NotionAPI } from 'notion-client'

const notion = new NotionAPI()

const recordMap = await notion.getPage('067dd719a912471ea9a3ac10710e7fdf')

Once you have the data for a Notion page, you can render it via React:

import * as React from 'react'
import { NotionRenderer } from 'react-notion-x'

export default ({ recordMap }) => (
  <NotionRenderer recordMap={recordMap} fullPage={true} darkMode={false} />
)

Note: for heavier blocks, you'll have to opt into using them via NotionRenderer.components. These are not included in the default NotionRenderer export because they're too heavyweight for many use cases.

Styles

You'll need to import some CSS styles as well. If you're using Next.js, we recommend you place these imports at the top of pages/_app.js:

// core styles shared by all of react-notion-x (required)
import 'react-notion-x/src/styles.css'

// used for code syntax highlighting (optional)
import 'prismjs/themes/prism-tomorrow.css'

// used for rendering equations (optional)
import 'katex/dist/katex.min.css'

Optional Components

The default imports from react-notion-x strive to be as lightweight as possible. Most blocks will render just fine, but some larger blocks like PDFs and collection views (database views) are not included by default.

To use them, you'll need to import the ones you want from react-notion-x/build/third-party/*:

import { Code } from 'react-notion-x/build/third-party/code'
import { Collection } from 'react-notion-x/build/third-party/collection'
import { Equation } from 'react-notion-x/build/third-party/equation'
import { Modal } from 'react-notion-x/build/third-party/modal'
import { Pdf } from 'react-notion-x/build/third-party/pdf'

Note that we strongly recommend lazy-loading these components unless you know you'll need them up front for your use case.

If you're using Next.js, you can use next/dynamic to lazily load them. If your notion content doesn't use one of these heavyweight components, then it won't get loaded into your page. This keeps the initial page bundle small and your website feeling snappy.

import dynamic from 'next/dynamic'

const Code = dynamic(() =>
  import('react-notion-x/build/third-party/code').then((m) => m.Code)
)
const Collection = dynamic(() =>
  import('react-notion-x/build/third-party/collection').then(
    (m) => m.Collection
  )
)
const Equation = dynamic(() =>
  import('react-notion-x/build/third-party/equation').then((m) => m.Equation)
)
const Pdf = dynamic(
  () => import('react-notion-x/build/third-party/pdf').then((m) => m.Pdf),
  {
    ssr: false
  }
)
const Modal = dynamic(
  () => import('react-notion-x/build/third-party/modal').then((m) => m.Modal),
  {
    ssr: false
  }
)

You'll need to enable them by passing them to the components prop of NotionRenderer.

export default ({ recordMap }) => (
  <NotionRenderer
    recordMap={recordMap}
    components={{
      Code,
      Collection,
      Equation,
      Modal,
      Pdf
    }}
  />
)

The Code component uses Prism under the hood. It comes bundled with support for JavaScript, TypeScript, and CSS by default. To add support for additional language syntaxes, follow the example in components/NotionPage.tsx which lazily loads Prism components at runtime.

For Equation support, you'll need to import the katex CSS styles.

For each of these optional components, make sure you're also importing the relevant third-party CSS if needed (above).

Private Pages

You may optionally pass an authToken and activeUser to the API if you want to access private Notion pages. Both can be retrieved from your web browser. Once you are viewing your workpace, open your Development Tools > Application > Cookie > and Copy the token_v2 and notion_user_id. Respectively, activeUser: notion_user_id, authToken: token_v2.

We recommend storing these as environment variables and passing them into the NotionAPI constructor as follows:

const notion = new NotionAPI({
  activeUser: process.env.NOTION_ACTIVE_USER,
  authToken: process.env.NOTION_TOKEN_V2
})

Note that this is not the same as the API token provided by the official Notion API since notion-client uses the unofficial Notion API (which is what all Notion apps use).

Next.js Examples

Here's a minimal Next.js example project with the most important code in pages/[pageId].tsx and components/NotionPage.tsx. You can view this example live on Vercel.

Here's a more full-featured Next.js example project with the most important code in pages/[pageId].tsx and components/NotionPage.tsx. You can view this example live on Vercel.

The full-featured demo adds a few nice features:

  • Uses next/image to serve optimal images
  • Uses preview images generated via lqip-modern
  • Lazily bundles larger optional components via next/dynamic
    • Code
    • Equation
    • Pdf
    • Modal
    • Collection (e.g., notion databases including table and gallery views)

For a production example, check out the Next.js Notion Starter Kit, which uses react-notion-x under the hood.

Packages

Package NPM Environment Description
react-notion-x NPM Browser + SSR Fast React renderer for Notion.
notion-client NPM Server-side* Robust TypeScript client for the Notion API.
notion-types NPM Universal Core Notion TypeScript types.
notion-utils NPM Universal Useful utilities for working with Notion data.

* Notion's API should not be called from client-side browsers due to CORS restrictions. notion-client is compatible with Node.js and Deno.

Supported Blocks

The majority of Notion blocks and collection views are fully supported.

Block Type Supported Block Type Enum Notes
Page ✅ Yes page
Text ✅ Yes text Supports all known text formatting options
Bookmark ✅ Yes bookmark Embedded preview of external URL
Bulleted List ✅ Yes bulleted_list <ul>
Numbered List ✅ Yes numbered_list <ol>
Heading 1 ✅ Yes header <h1>
Heading 2 ✅ Yes sub_header <h2>
Heading 3 ✅ Yes sub_sub_header <h3>
Quote ✅ Yes quote
Callout ✅ Yes callout
Equation (block) ✅ Yes equation katex via react-katex
Equation (inline) ✅ Yes text katex via react-katex
Todos (checkboxes) ✅ Yes to_do
Table Of Contents ✅ Yes table_of_contents See notion-utils getPageTableOfContents helper funtion
Divider ✅ Yes divider Horizontal line
Column ✅ Yes column
Column List ✅ Yes column_list
Toggle ✅ Yes toggle <details>
Image ✅ Yes image <img>
Embed ✅ Yes embed Generic iframe embeds
Video ✅ Yes video iframe
Figma ✅ Yes figma iframe
Google Maps ✅ Yes maps iframe
Google Drive ✅ Yes drive Google Docs, Sheets, etc custom embed
Tweet ✅ Yes tweet Uses the twitter embedding SDK
PDF ✅ Yes pdf Uses S3 signed URLs and react-pdf
Audio ✅ Yes audio Uses S3 signed URLs and HTML5 audio element
File ✅ Yes file Uses S3 signed URLs (generic downloadable file)
Link ✅ Yes text External links
Page Link ✅ Yes page Link to a notion page in the same workspace
External Page Link ✅ Yes text Links to a notion page or collection view in another workspace
Code (block) ✅ Yes code Block code syntax highlighting via prismjs
Code (inline) ✅ Yes text Inline code formatting (no syntax highlighting)
Collections ✅ Yes Also known as databases
Collection View ✅ Yes collection_view Collections have a 1:N mapping to collection views
Collection View Table ✅ Yes collection_view type = "table" (default table view)
Collection View Gallery ✅ Yes collection_view type = "gallery" (grid view)
Collection View Board ✅ Yes collection_view type = "board" (kanban view)
Collection View List ✅ Yes collection_view type = "list" (vertical list view)
Collection View Calendar ❌ Missing collection_view type = "calendar" (embedded calendar view)
Collection View Page ✅ Yes collection_view_page Collection view as a standalone page

Please let us know if you find any issues or missing blocks.

All known blocks and most known configuration settings can be found in our test suite.

Performance

Google Lighthouse Scores
Google Lighthouse scores for an example page rendered by `react-notion-x` on Vercel.

Bundlephobia

Out of the box, react-notion-x is pretty fast and relatively lightweight, but there are a few key factors to be aware of.

Bundlephobia reports a ~27kb gzip bundle size for the main react-notion-x bundle. This doesn't include the optional third-party components which we recommend lazy loading via next/dynamic only if a page needs them.

Another major factor for perf comes from images hosted by Notion. They're generally unoptimized, improperly sized, and not cacheable because Notion has to deal with fine-grained access control that users can change at any time. You can override the default mapImageUrl function on NotionRenderer to add caching via a CDN like Cloudflare Workers, which is what Notion X does for optimal page load speeds.

NotionRenderer also supports lazy image loading with optional low quality image placeholder previews. You can see a demo of this in practice on this page which is using lqip-modern to pre-generate placeholder images that are inspired by Medium.com's image loading.

If you're using Next.js, we recommend passing next/image and next/link to the renderer as follows:

import Image from 'next/image'
import Link from 'next/link'

export default ({ recordMap }) => (
  <NotionRenderer
    recordMap={recordMap}
    components={{
      nextImage: Image,
      nextLink: Link
    }}
  />
)

This wraps these next.js components in a compatability layer so NotionRenderer can use them the same as their non-next.js equivalents <img> and <a>.

Related

  • Next.js Template - The easiest way to deploy a self-hosted Notion site with Next.js and Vercel.
    • Only takes a few minutes to setup!
    • Uses react-notion-x under the hood
  • Notion Test Suite - Comprehensive suite of Notion test pages
  • react-notion - Original react renderer for notion
    • react-notion-x started as a fork of react-notion with better support for different types of Notion content (especially collections) and grew into something much more comprehensive
    • react-notion is no longer actively maintained
  • notion-api-worker - Notion API proxy exposed as a Cloudflare Worker
    • notion-types and notion-client are a refactored fork of notion-api-worker.
    • One of the main use cases for react-notion-x is server-side rendering via Next.js, in which case the CF worker is unnecessary
    • We recommend that you use notion-client instead
  • notion-api-agent - Alternative Notion API client
  • notion-py - Excellent Python wrapper around the Notion API

Contributing

See the contribution guide and join our amazing list of contributors!

License

MIT © Travis Fischer

This project extends MIT-licensed work by Timo Lins, Tobias Lins, Sam Wight, and other contributors.

Big thanks to Noah Bragg who runs Potion.so for helping to maintain react-notion-x.

Support my OSS work by following me on twitter twitter

Sponsor

Super.so has been kind enough to sponsor this project. If you're looking for a hosted solution that takes a very similar approach to react-notion-x but handles all of the details for you, then definitely check them out.

React Notion X