@customerio/ember-context

This addon provides a way to share data through to nested components without having to pass arguments at each level (i.e. no prop drilling).

Compatibility

Ember.js v4.8 or above
Embroider or ember-auto-import v2

Installation

ember install @customerio/ember-context

Usage

Context providers

Data can be provided to all of a component's descendants in one of two ways:

The provide decorator
The ContextProvider component

This library exports a decorator, which can be used on any getter or property to expose it as context to all descendants of the component. The decorator requires a string argument that is the name of the context, which will be used by descendants to look up the value.

import Component from '@glimmer/component';
import { provide } from '@customerio/ember-context';

export default class MyComponent extends Component {
  @provide('my-context-name')
  get someState() {
    return 'some value';
  }
}

It is possible to expose tracked properties in context, by adding a @provide-decorated getter, like so:

import Component from '@glimmer/component';
import { provide } from '@customerio/ember-context';

export default class MyComponent extends Component {
  @tracked myTrackedValue = 'some value';

  @provide('my-context-name')
  get someState() {
    return this.myTrackedValue;
    // or expressions like return this.args.someArgument;
  }
}

Any descendants retrieving this context will automatically recompute when the tracked property changes.

Note: For the purposes of the decorator, it doesn't matter what the getter is named. The value of the getter will be exposed under the context name.

`ContextProvider`

Alternatively, this addon also provides a ContextProvider component:

<ContextProvider @key="my-context-name" @value={{this.someValue}}>
  {{! descendant components can now look up "my-context-name" }}
</ContextProvider>

Context consumers

There are also two ways to retrieve a context value:

Using the consume decorator
Using the ContextConsumer component

`@consume`

The consume decorator allows us to retrieve a context value in a way that's similar to working with an Ember service:

import Component from '@glimmer/component';
import { consume } from '@customerio/ember-context';

export default class MyChildComponent extends Component {
  @consume('my-context-name') myContextValue!: string;
}

  <p>The context value is: {{this.myContextValue}}</p>

`ContextConsumer`

Alternatively, a context value can be retrieved with the ContextConsumer component. It accepts a @key string argument, which is the name of the context, and it yields the value of the context:

<ContextConsumer @key="my-context-name" as |value|>
  {{value}}
</ContextConsumer>

Important note: Currently, the @provide and @consume decorators only work in components. Providing or consuming context state from Routes, Controllers, Helpers or Services does not work.

In Route templates, the ContextProvider and ContextConsumer components can be used for working with contexts.

TypeScript

This addon ships with TypeScript and Glint support.

To take advantage of Glint types (for the ContextProvider and ContextConsumer components), you'll need to import the template registry interface, as described in the Glint docs:

// types/global.d.ts
import '@glint/environment-ember-loose';

import type EmberContextTemplateRegistry from '@customerio/ember-context/template-registry';

declare module '@glint/environment-ember-loose/registry' {
  export default interface Registry extends EmberContextTemplateRegistry, /* other addon registries */ {
    // local entries
  }
}

Additionally, this addon exposes a type registry to associate string context keys with the type of value.

First, you'll need to add

import '@customerio/ember-context/context-registry';

somewhere in your source files or type declaration files. This will force TypeScript to merge type declarations for the registry.

Next, you'll need to declare the value type for your context keys, like this:

declare module '@customerio/ember-context/context-registry' {
  export default interface ContextRegistry {
    'my-context-name': string;
    'AuthContext': AuthInterface;
    // ...
  }
}

You can keep a global types/context.d.ts file and declare all your contexts there, or you can declare the context types in the same files where you provide them, like this:

import Component from '@glimmer/component';
import { provide } from '@customerio/ember-context';

export default class MyComponent extends Component {
  @provide('my-context-name')
  get someState() {
    return 'some value';
  }
}

declare module '@customerio/ember-context/context-registry' {
  export default interface ContextRegistry {
    'my-context-name': string;
  }
}

With ContextRegistry types defined and Glint enabled, the ContextProvider and ContextConsumer components will correctly infer the value types based on the string context key arguments.

When consuming a context with the @consume decorator, the type can be retrieved using the registry like this:

import Component from '@glimmer/component';
import { consume } from '@customerio/ember-context';
import type ContextRegistry from '@customerio/ember-context/context-registry';

export default class MyChildComponent extends Component {
  @consume('my-context-name') myContextValue!: ContextRegistry['my-context-name'];
}

myContextValue will then correctly infer the type of value - provided you have defined the type elsewhere, of course. The explicit type assignment above is necessary, because returning a type through decorators automatically isn't supported in TypeScript.

At the moment, context names must be strings. We have tried symbol keys, but Ember Inspector started throwing errors when parsing component trees where symbols were used as arguments, so we dropped that idea (for now, at least).

Finally, to avoid typos when referencing context keys, and generally making it easier to maintain context definitions, we recommend declaring and exporting your context keys as constants:

import Component from '@glimmer/component';
import { provide } from '@customerio/ember-context';

export const MyContext = 'my-context-name' as const;

export default class MyComponent extends Component {
  @provide(MyContext)
  get someState() {
    return 'some value';
  }
}

declare module '@customerio/ember-context/context-registry' {
  export default interface ContextRegistry {
    [MyContext]: string;
  }
}

import Component from '@glimmer/component';
import { consume } from '@customerio/ember-context';
import { MyContext } from 'my-app/components/my-component';
import type ContextRegistry from '@customerio/ember-context/context-registry';

export default class MyChildComponent extends Component {
  @consume(MyContext) myContextValue!: ContextRegistry[typeof MyContext];
}

Inspiration

The idea was to create an API similar to the Context API in React

React Context API: The original inspiration for this project is, of course, the React Context
Svelte Context API: Svelte exposes contexts via simple setContext and getContext functions
Vue provide/inject: Vue allows working with context via provide and inject functions
ember-context: Another Ember addon that also implements a similar Context API. However, that addon's implementation relies has providers racing on a provider key, while our addon uses the actual Ember component tree

Contributing

See the Contributing guide for details.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.