@actinc/dls

Design Language System (DLS)

     

The Design Language System for ACT & Encoura front-end projects. View the UI components here.

Project Setup

Installation

In order to use the DLS, you must install it along with Material UI version 5.x and React version 17.x or 18.x.

npm install --save @actinc/dls@latest @mui/material @mui/lab @mui/x-data-grid @emotion/styled @emotion/react react react-dom

Choosing a Theme

This DLS is built on top of the theme engine from Material UI, and ships with several themes out of the box:

1. "ACT": for ACT's "traditional" look and feel
2. "ACT_ET": for ACT's "Emerging Technology" look and feel
3. "ENCOURA_CLASSIC": for Encoura's "Classic" look and feel
4. "ENCOURAGE": for the Encoura's "Encourage" look and feel

To apply one of these themes to your components, simply wrap your application in the ThemeProvider component and specify a theme!

import { ThemeProvider } from '@actinc/dls/components';

...

const MyApp = () => (
  // specify a theme here!
  <ThemeProvider theme="ACT_ET">
    <App />
  </ThemeProvider>
);

Extending Themes

You can exend the core DLS themes using using our variation on the createTheme generator from Material UI:

import deepMerge from 'deepmerge';
import { createTheme } from '@actinc/dls/styles/createTheme';
import { THEME_ACT } from '@actinc/dls/styles/themeAct';
import { ThemeProvider } from '@actinc/dls/components';

const myExtendedTheme = createTheme(deepMerge(THEME_ACT, {
  // theme customizations go here!
}));

const MyApp = () => (
  <ThemeProvider theme={myExtendedTheme}>
    <App />
  </ThemeProvider>
);

Custom Themes

Alternatively, you can build your own theme from scratch using our variation on the createTheme generator from Material UI. Our version takes the same parameters, but will return a strongly typed version of the theme with any customizations you may have added.

import { ThemeProvider } from '@actinc/dls/components';
import { createTheme } from '@actinc/dls/styles/createTheme';

const myCustomTheme = createTheme({
  // build your theme here!
});

const MyApp = () => (
  <ThemeProvider theme={myCustomTheme}>
    <App />
  </ThemeProvider>
);

Custom Themes And Styled Components

Within your styled components, if you need to access custom a theme variable that is not present in the default MUI Theme type, we provide a helper function to generate a styled function that is strongly typed to your theme:

import { createThemeStyled } from '@actinc/dls/helpers/styled';
import { THEME_ACT } from '@actinc/dls/styles/themeAct';
import TableCell from '@mui/material/TableCell';

const styled = createThemeStyled(THEME_ACT);

const StyledTypography = styled(TableCell)(({ theme }) => ({
   // `customDims` is not available on the default theme
  height: theme.customDims.heights.tableHeader,
}))

Load Fonts

Montserrat

The ACT and ACT_ET themes assume that the Montserrat font is available in the browser. Therefore, it is recommended that you include the following font reference in the head of your React app:

<link
  href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Montserrat:300,400,500,600,700&display=swap"
  rel="stylesheet"
/>

Museo

The ENCOURA_CLASSIC theme assumes that the Museo font is available in the browser. Therefore, it is recommended that you include the following font reference in the head of your React app:

<style type="text/css">
  @font-face {
    font-family: 'Museo';
    src: url('path/to/Museo300.otf');
    font-style: normal;
    font-weight: 300;
  }
  @font-face {
    font-family: 'Museo';
    src: url('path/to/Museo500.otf');
    font-style: normal;
    font-weight: 500;
  }
  @font-face {
    font-family: 'Museo';
    src: url('path/to/Museo700.otf');
    font-style: normal;
    font-weight: 700;
  }
</style>

The Museo font files can be downloaded here.

Work Sans, Roboto, Roboto Mono

The ENCOURAGE theme assumes that the Work Sans, Roboto, and the Roboto Mono fonts are available in the browser. Therefore, it is recommended that you include the following font reference in the head of your React app:

<link
  href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?display=swap&family=Work+Sans:wght@200..800"
  rel="stylesheet"
/>
<link
  href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?display=swap&family=Roboto:wght@300;400;500;700"
  rel="stylesheet"
/>
<link
  href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?display=swap&family=Roboto+Mono:wght@200..700"
  rel="stylesheet"
/>

CSS Baseline

It is recommended to inject the CssBaseline component from Material UI near the root of your component tree in order to reset and normalize browser styles for your project:

import { CssBaseline } from '@mui/material';

...

const MyApp = () => (
  ...
  <CssBaseline />
  ...
);

Server-Side Rendering

If your project's React framework supports SSR, you can configure the DLS components for server-side rendering. See the official Next.js example here.

Icons

The DLS re-exports all icons that are provided by the mdi-material-ui package.

You can search for a specific icon to use on materialdesignicons.com. Once you've found the perfect icon, you can use it in your project like so:

import { PollBox } from '@actinc/dls/icons';

...

const MyComponent = () => (
  ...
  <PollBox />
  ...
);

Import Stuff

That's it! You're ready to use the DLS. Simply import the components, constants, context, helpers, hooks, icons, styles, and types that you need:

// components
import { Alert } from '@actinc/dls/components';
// constants
import { SORT_DIRECTION_TYPES } from '@actinc/dls/constants';
// context
import { AlertContext } from '@actinc/dls/context';
// helpers
import { search } from '@actinc/dls/helpers';
// hooks
import { useLocalStorage } from '@actinc/dls/hooks';
// icons
import { ChevronDown } from '@actinc/dls/icons';
// styles & themes
import { THEME_ACT } from '@actinc/dls/styles/themeAct';
// types
import { SortObject } from '@actinc/dls/types';

Transient Props and Styled Components

The DLS provides a customized styled helper which omits transient props (those starting with $) from the rendered HTML, while still being able to use those parameters in styled components. Use as a drop in replacement of the styled function that exists in @mui/material/styles:

import { styled } from '@actinc/dls/helpers/styled';
import Button, { ButtonProps } from '@mui/material/Button';
import * as React from 'react';

const StyledButton = styled(Button)<ButtonProps & { $ultraWide: boolean }>(
  ({ $ultraWide, theme }) => ({
    paddingLeft: $ultraWide ? theme.spacing(8) : theme.spacing(4),
    paddingRight: $ultraWide ? theme.spacing(8) : theme.spacing(4),
  }),
);

const MyComponent: React.FC = () => {
  return <StyledButton $ultraWide />;
};

• This implementation is how Styled Components does it: https://styled-components.com/docs/api#transient-props
• Unfortunately emotion (the default styling engine in React) doesn't seem to care: https://github.com/emotion-js/emotion/issues/2193#issuecomment-1178372803

ES Modules & Tree Shaking

Version <= 6 of the DLS were built and exported as CommonJS modules. While this allowed the simplest integration of the DLS into any project, it also resulted in project bundles being larger than desired due to the inability of bundlers to tree-shake the DLS.

In version >= 7 of the DLS, we are now building and exporting the library as ECMAScript modules. This allows your project's bundler to much more easily read and tree-shake the DLS right out of the box. (No more need for babel-plugin-transform-imports!)

Furthermore, the DLS's package.json is also setting:

"sideEffects": false,

to instruct builders to enable even deeper tree-shaking. This should make bundle sizes significantly smaller with less effort. However, the tradeoff is that in certain scenarios, like Lazy Loading, if you are expecting a dependency to be there that is now removed from tree-shaking, things will break and you may need to import that dependency directly in a parent bundle.

SyntaxError: Unexpected token 'export'

One downside of exporting the DLS as ECMAScript modules is that the import and export keywords are preserved, which may cause your packager/runner to throw:

SyntaxError: Unexpected token 'export'

If you see this error, you'll need to instruct your packager/runner to transpile the DLS on-the-fly.

Next.js

You can do this in a Next.js app by adding the DLS to the transpilePackages option in your next.config.js file.

transpilePackages: ['@actinc/dls'],

Jest

You can do this in the Jest test runner by omitting the DLS from the transformIgnorePatterns option in your jest.config.js file.

transformIgnorePatterns: ['/node_modules/(?!(@actinc/dls)/)'],

Local Development

Check out the developer guide to learn how to build effectively for the DLS.

To run the DLS locally:

1. Install node modules: npm install
2. Start the Storybook component visualizer: npm start

npm Scripts

There are lots of npm scripts at your disposal during local development. Here are some of the more important ones:

Script	Description
npm run build	Transpile DLS from TypeScript (./src) into ES5 (./dist).
npm run build-storybook	Create a static website for deployment (./storybook-static).
npm start	Start the Storybook component visualizer.
npm test	Run all tests.
npm run release	Publish a new release of the DLS.

Pinned Packages

Some npm packages are pinned to non-current versions for a specific reason:

Package	Version	Reason
typescript	4.9.5	5.x is not yet compatible with react-docgen-typescript.

Changelog

7.1.1 (2023-04-18)

Bug Fixes

• Fix type issue with SvgIcon on EmptyState component (8a9004a)
• Migrate Storybook 6 code to Storybook 7 (326f34b)