@ebi-gene-expression-group/atlas-react-fetch-loader

Expression Atlas React Fetch Loader

A React HOC component that enables other components to remotely fetch data from an endpoint.

Usage

import { withFetchLoader } from '@ebi-gene-expression-group/atlas-react-fetch-loader'
import MyComponent from 'my-component'

const MyComponentWithFetchLoader = withFetchLoader(MyComponent)

ReactDOM.render(
  <MyComponentWithFetchLoader
    host={`https://domain.tld/path/`}
    resource={`json/endpoint`}
    errorPayloadProvider={ error => /* some object with error info for the wrapped component */ }
    loadingPayloadProvider={ data => /* some object to display feedback while the component is loading */ }
    fulfilledPayloadProvider={ data => /* some object that is added as props */ }
    {...passThroughProps} />,
  target)

Be aware that fields in the JSON data can overwrite values passed in as props if they have the same keys.

Error signalling

By default, if there’s an error fetching the remote data, instead of the wrapped component an alert Callout will be rendered with a description of the underlying error in order to conform to the EBI Visual Framework. If you want to handle the error yourself you can pass an errorPayloadProvider function prop; it takes an error object as its only argument and returns an arbitrary object which will be destructured and added to the pass-through props. This is especially useful if e.g. you’d like to render an error message within your wrapped component using info such as the error code or a message supplied by the server.

The props expected by the callout component should have the following shape:

interface Error {
  description: string;
  name: string;
  message: string;
}

The above is a subset of JavaScript Error objects.

Loading

There is a similar prop, loadingPayloadProvider, to replace the animated loading message with the wrapped component and give feedback based on the return value of the function, which should be an object to be destructured and added to the pass-through props. In this case, however, the function has no arguments since data hasn’t been retrieved yet. If you wish to make a complex transformation based on a prop value, you can always pass a closure over whatever arguments you need.

Adding props

Besides the new props coming from the fetch request, you can add a fulfilledPayloadProvider function which takes the payload as an argument and returns an object which, again, is destructured and added as props to the wrapped component. Additionally, you can rename fields from the JSON object with the renameDataKeys prop: any key is renamed to the string value.

Raw text

By default the component will parse the response as JSON but a boolean prop raw can be set to true, in which case the payload will be parsed as plain text. In this case renameDataKeys will be ignored but you can use the fulfilledPayloadProvider to store the response in a prop of your choice for the wrapped component.

A real use case is the Single Cell Expression Atlas Information Banner:

import { withFetchLoader } from '@ebi-gene-expression-group/atlas-react-fetch-loader'
import AtlasInformationBanner from '@ebi-gene-expression-group/atlas-information-banner'

const AtlasInformationBannerWithFetchLoader = withFetchLoader(AtlasInformationBanner)
const render = (options, target) => {
    ReactDOM.render(
      <AtlasInformationBannerWithFetchLoader
        {...options}
        host={`https://ebi-gene-expression-group.github.io/`}
        resource={`scxa-motd.md`}
        errorPayloadProvider={ () => {} }
        loadingPayloadProvider={ () => {} }
        fulfilledPayloadProvider={ data => ({ motd: data }) }
        raw={true}
      />,
      document.getElementById(target))
}