react-dat-gui

React dat.GUI

react-dat-gui is a fully* featured React port of Google's esteemed dat.GUI controller library. It comes packed with all of the core components you will need to cleanly integrate dat.GUIs into your React app.

Demo     Codesandbox

The dat.GUI library is designed for easily updating and interacting with objects in real time. It is used extensively in canvas and WebGL rendering demos/apps for libraries such as three.js and is also commonly used in browser based editing software.

Contents

• Basic Usage
• Docs
• Local Development
• What's missing
• Roadmap

Installation

npm install react-dat-gui --save

Basic Usage

react-dat-gui has a wrapper component <DatGUI /> and several control components that can be used to add functionality to the controller.

import React from 'react';
import DatGui, { DatBoolean, DatColor, DatNumber, DatString } from 'react-dat-gui';

class App extends React.Component {
  state = {
    data: {
      package: 'react-dat-gui',
      power: 9000,
      isAwesome: true,
      feelsLike: '#2FA1D6',
    }
  }

  // Update current state with changes from controls
  handleUpdate = newData =>
    this.setState(prevState => ({
      data: { ...prevState.data, ...newData }
    }));

  render() {
    const { data } = this.state;

    return (
      <DatGui data={data} onUpdate={this.handleUpdate}>
        <DatString path='package' label='Package' />
        <DatNumber path='power' label='Power' min={9000} max={9999} step={1} />
        <DatBoolean path='isAwesome' label='Awesome?' />
        <DatColor path='feelsLike' label='Feels Like' />
      </DatGui>
    )
  }

Docs

<DatGui />

This is the main container component for your GUI and is the default export from the package.

required

prop	Description	Type
data	The data your dat.GUI controller will mutate	object
onUpdate	The method which will be called whenever an update is handled by the controller	function
children	The dat.GUI components that make up the controller	array

optional

prop	Description	Type	Default
liveUpdate	Determines if live updates should occur	boolean	true
labelWidth	The width of the labels in any valid CSS units	string	"40%"
className	The class name to set on the DatGui div	string	null
style	The style object to set on the DatGui div	object	null

Control Components

react-dat-gui comes with eight built-in control components which can be used by rendering them as direct children of <DatGui />.

• DatBoolean
• DatButton
• DatColor
• DatFolder
• DatPresets
• DatSelect
• DatString

Custom control components can also be used so long as they implement the required props.

Common props

All child components of <DatGui /> receive the following props implicitly, these are useful when building custom control components. See the built-in control components in src/components for examples of how to implement your own controls.

prop	Description	Type
data	The data your dat.GUI controller will mutate, the same object from `	object
labelWidth	The width of the control name label	string
liveUpdate	Determines if live updates should occur	boolean
_onUpdateValue	A callback function for `, call this method to update dat.Gui state from your control.	function

Below are docs for the required and optional props you can pass to each built-in control component.

required

• path: string - the path to the value within the data object which the component will control, eg., considering your object was { foo: 'bar' }: <DatString path='foo' /> or { foo: { bar: 'string' } }: <DatString path='foo.bar' /> for nested values.
• Note, this prop is not required for the following components
  • DatButton
  • DatFolder
  • DatPresets

optional

• className: string - A CSS class name
• style: object - A style object for inline styles
• label: string - The label for the controller eg., <DatString path='message' label='Message' />
• labelWidth: string - The width of the labels in any valid CSS units, overrides <DatGUI labelWidth>

DatBoolean

Used for controlling boolean values. Renders a checkbox input element.

DatButton

Can be used for performing any kind of function. Simply pass an onClick prop to the component and it will fire whenever the rendered element is clicked.

props

required

• onClick :func - the function to perform with the rendered element is clicked

DatColor

Uses react-color to render a color picker component that will control color values.

DatFolder

Component which wraps other components to render them within an expandable/collapsable nested folder.

props

required

• title: string - The folder title eg., <DatFolder title='MyAwesomeFolder' />
• children: array - The child components to render

optional

• closed: boolean - Whether the initial state of the folder is closed, defaults to true

DatNumber

A number component for updating numeric values. Will render a slider if min, max and step props are supplied.

props

optional

• min: number - The minimum range for the number
• max: number - The maximum range for the number
• step: number - The amount the number should increment each tick

If your step prop is a float, DatNumber will ensure that your number field steps to the correct number of decimal places to align with the step that you've set.

DatPresets

Presets for the object which your DatGui is controlling can be supplied to this component as items in its options prop. A select field will be rendered which will allow you to easily switch between the presets.

Each item in this array will need to be in the format { 'presetName': ...data, ...preset } where ...data is your initial data and ...preset is your preset.

props

required

• options: array - An array of objects, each in the format { 'presetName': ...data, ...preset }

DatSelect

A select component for updating a value with one of the options supplied via the options prop. The initial selected value will be taken from the mapped path prop.

props

required

• options: array - A simple array of options to select from eg., <DatSelect path='fruits' options={['apple', 'orange', 'pear']} />

DatString

A simple text input component that can be used to mutate strings.

Local Development

Clone the repo

git clone https://github.com/claus/react-dat-gui.git react-dat-gui
cd react-dat-gui

In order to see your changes to react-dat-gui the best way is to develop on the package and the example simultaneously. To do this, follow these steps.

1. Setup symlinks and install dependencies

npm install
cd example
npm install

2. Run the library in development mode

cd ..
npm run dev

3. Run the example app in development mode (in second terminal window)

cd example
npm run dev

After the example has compiled, it should be available for viewing at http://localhost:3000. Changes to the library code should now hot reload in the example app

Scripts

Script	Description
build	Builds the library for production into /dist
start	Starts the library in development mode with hot module reloading
test	Runs unit testing suite powered by Jest and testing-library
lint	Runs linting over entire codebase with prettier, eslint and stylelint
lint-js	Lints only javascript files
lint-styles	Lints only stylesheet files
fix	Runs linting over entire codebase with prettier, eslint and stylelint and applies any available automatic fixes
fix-js	Lints only javascript files and applies any available automatic fixes
fix-styles	Lints only stylesheet files and applies any available automatic fixes
deploy	Compiles and deploys a static build of /example next.js app to gh-pages

What's missing

There are still a few features from the original implementation missing from this package. These are mainly related to saving and loading data as well as local storage. Animations for folder expanding/collapsing is also not currently implemented, but shouldn't be too hard to do.

For the first, I think the fact that this is now an NPM module sort of goes against it handling this sort of stuff. Google's original concept was basically a plug and play controller that could do everything if you just slam it into the browser and pass it an object. However, in module form, it's expected that you'll most likely be integrating this with an existing application. In that case, you'll probably have pretty specific needs around how you would like to save/load data into your GUI and so it's been left out for now.

Local storage however is in the roadmap and will probably be done very soon.

Roadmap

• Loading and storing both default and preset data via localStorage
• Animations for DatFolder expanding/collapsing
• Time travel with undo/redo buttons
• Better support for floating point DatNumbers (rounding etc.) ✅

License

MIT