RELAB

⚛️ Minimal, Isolated React UI Development Environment

Features

• Isolated development environment
• Zero-configuration
• Render any React component
• Hot reloading
• Fullscreen
• No UI
• No custom APIs required
• Support for custom CSS and stylesheets

Install

npm install -g relab

relab src/components/Button.js --open

About

RELAB is a minimal component development and testing environment that doesn't require custom configurations or any initial setup.

RELAB helps you develop UI components in a test environment that's isolated from the rest of your codebase, encouraging the development of reusable components that are small and easy to test. Instead of relying on extra configurations, RELAB promotes the use of plain React components to develop examples and style guides for any UI component library.

Getting Started

RELAB can load any React component, but typically you'll want to create test cases to see a single component in multiple states. Suppose you have a library of UI components in a folder named /src/components. To test these components, create an examples folder that will be used for displaying test states as well as serving as code examples.

In the example folder, create a file to demonstrate the use of a Button component.

// examples/Button.js
import React from 'react'
import Button from '../src/components/Button'
 
export default () => (
  <Button color='green'>
    Hello
  </Button>
)

Next, in your terminal run the following command. Be sure you've already installed any dependencies your components might need using npm install.

relab examples/Button.js --open

The --open flag will automatically open the development environment in your default browser.

In the browser, you should see a live reloading view of your component.

Project Setup

To use RELAB for a particular project, you might want to add npm run scripts to make using relab easier for others, and to avoid the need to install RELAB globally.

Install RELAB as a dev dependency:

npm install --save-dev relab

In your package.json add a run script:

"scripts": {
  "relab": "relab examples/Library.js --open"
}

RELAB can now be run with the command npm run relab.

CLI Options

-p --port         Port for dev server

-o --open         Open in default browser

-s --stylesheet   Path to stylesheet to include

-c --config       Path to config file

-e --export       Export the RELAB demo to a static bundle

Components

RELAB includes several wrapper components that can be used for development.

Library

Creates a library view of multiple components with controls for cycling through each component.

import Library from 'relab/Library'

XRay

A wrapper for react-x-ray with option to toggle on an off.

import XRay from 'relab/XRay'

MIT License