This project skeleton was created to help people get started with creating their own React component library using:
It also features:
- Storybook to help you create and show off your components
- Jest and React Testing Library enabling testing of the components
Read my blog post about why and how I created this project skeleton ▸
npm run test
npm run build
To run a live-reload Storybook server on your local machine:
npm run storybook
To export your Storybook as static files:
npm run storybook:export
You can then serve the files under storybook-static
using S3, GitHub pages, Express etc. I've hosted this library at: https://www.harveydelaney.com/react-component-library
I've included a handy NodeJS util file under util
called create-component.js
. Instead of copy pasting components to create a new component, you can instead run this command to generate all the files you need to start building out a new component. To use it:
npm run generate YourComponentName
This will generate:
/src
/YourComponentName
YourComponentName.tsx
YourComponentName.stories.tsx
YourComponentName.test.tsx
YourComponentName.types.ts
YourComponentName.scss
The default templates for each file can be modified under util/templates
.
Don't forget to add the component to your index.ts
exports if you want the library to export the component!
Let's say you have another project (test-app
) on your machine that you want to try installing the component library into without having to first publish the component library. In the test-app
directory, you can run:
npm i --save ../react-component-library
which will install the local component library as a dependency in test-app
. It'll then appear as a dependency in package.json
like:
...
"dependencies": {
...
"react-component-library": "file:../react-component-library",
...
},
...
Your components can then be imported and used in that project.
First, make sure you have an NPM account and are logged into NPM using the npm login
command.
Then update the name
field in package.json
to reflect your NPM package name in your private or public NPM registry. Then run:
npm publish
Let's say you created a public NPM package called harvey-component-library
with the TestComponent
component created in this repository.
Usage of the component (after the library installed as a dependency into another project) will be:
import React from "react";
import { TestComponent } from "harvey-component-library";
const App = () => (
<div className="app-container">
<h1>Hello I'm consuming the component library</h1>
<TestComponent theme="primary" />
</div>
);
export default App;
Check out this Code Sandbox for a live example.
I've found that it's helpful to export SASS variables to projects consuming the library. As such, I've added the rollup-plugin-copy
NPM package and used it to copy the typography.scss
and variables.scss
into the build
directory as part of the Rollup bundle process. This allows you to use these variables in your projects consuming the component library.
For example, let's say you installed harvey-component-library
into your project. To use the exported variables/mixins, in a SASS file you would do the following:
@import '~harvey-component-library/build/typography';
.example-container {
@include heading;
color: $harvey-white;
}
Yes you can.
Read this section of my blog post to find out how.
Or check out this commit to see what changes are neccesary to implement it.