@arcanejs/react-toolkit

@arcanejs/react-toolkit Allows you to quickly create real-time control panels for your single-process Node.js apps, using a custom react renderer, and WebSockets.

Control panels can be accessed by any number of browsers / devices / clients simultaneously, and changes caused by any client will be immediately propagated to all other clients.

The UI has also been designed primarily with touch devices in mind, but also works well with a cursor and keyboard.

What

• Easily create controller UIs for Node.js processes

• Uses server-side React for state management and UI composition

  • This is not SSR, you can use useState() hooks etc...

• Instantly updates all clients using WebSockets

• Collection of 9+ components to build your UIs

Why

Sometimes you're working on relatively simple local applications or scripts, and would like to have a way to interact with the state or configuration of these applications in real-time, for example:

• Lighting control or AV systems
• Home-Automation or Office building management and operation

Why Not

This project is not designed to be a general-purpose application framework, in particular, it's not suitable for any project / application that:

• Needs to scale beyond a single Node.js process
• Is stateless (It's explicitly designed to manage in-memory state)
• Will be exposed over the internet (no authentication has been implemented)

Usage

Install the following packages:

npm install --save react@^18 @arcanejs/toolkit @arcanejs/react-toolkit

Note:

• We explicitly require react version 18
• We don't need react-dom or any react native libraries, @arcanejs/react-toolkit is the react renderer.

Then you can then create control panels using react to manage the server-side state like this:

import { useState } from 'react';
import { Toolkit } from '@arcanejs/toolkit';
import { ToolkitRenderer, Group, Switch, SliderButton } from '@arcanejs/react-toolkit';

const toolkit = new Toolkit();

// Expose the toolkit control panel on HTTP port 3000
// Navigate to http://localhost:3000 to access the control panel
// this will be printed in your console
toolkit.start({
  mode: 'automatic',
  port: 3000,
});

const ControlPanel = () => {
  const [switchState, setSwitchState] = useState<'off' | 'on'>('off');
  const [sliderValue, setSliderValue] = useState(50);

  return (
    <Group direction='vertical'>
      <Group>
        {`Switch State: ${switchState}`}
        <Switch
            value={switchState}
            onChange={setSwitchState}
          />
      </Group>
      <Group>
        {`Slider Value: ${sliderValue}`}
        <SliderButton
          value={sliderValue}
          onChange={setSliderValue}
          min={0}
          max={100}
          />
      </Group>
    </Group>
  );
};

// Start rendering the control panel with @arcanejs/react-toolkit
ToolkitRenderer.render(<ControlPanel />, toolkit);

You would then be able to access the following control panel from localhost:3000:

Please note:

• You can not use normal react-dom / HTML elements in these applications or components, only @arcanejs components are supported.

• You are welcome to abstract / componentize your application as you like, in the same manner that you would any react-dom or react-native project.

  See the counter example.

• This react / component-tree / state is managed server-side, and does not accurately represent the HTML used on the frontend. Your @arcanejs tree is converted to a JSON representation, and then sent to clients / browsers over a WebSocket. There is then a separate react-dom application that is loaded in the browser, and then used to render the JSON representation of the @arcanejs tree.

• There is currently no ability to introduce custom components with your own JSON definition and react-dom rendering in the browser. Apps can only be composed of the below supported components, or composite components directly built by these components.

  (This is something that is planned for the future).

Components

For full example usage all of our components in applications that are ready-to-run, we recommend that you check-out the examples directory.

Button

Properties:

• text: string (optional)

  Text to display on the button

• icon: string (optional)

  In icon name from Material Icons to include on the button.

• error: string (optional)

  When set, highlight the button in a way to indicate an error, and expose the given text as a tooltip upon user hover.

• mode: 'normal' | 'pressed' (default: 'normal')

  Should the button display as pressed or not.

• onClick: () => void | Promise<void>

  Set an event listener for when the button is pressed.

  The listener can throw an exception, or return a promise that rejects, to indicate an error and propagate an error message to the user, similar to setting the error property.

e.g.:

const MyComponent = () => (
  <Button text="Stop" onClick={() => doAThing()} icon="close" />
);

Group

This component is the primary building block when it comes to creating layouts, you generally have many groups, and nest them to achieve the desired layout.

You can think of a group as similar to a <div> or <section> in HTML.

Properties:

• direction: 'horizontal' | 'vertical' (default: 'horizontal')

  Whether to arrange the children of this group in a row or column.

• wrap: boolean (default: false)

  If true, when the group runs out of vertical or horizontal space, child components will be wrapped, and start to be arranged on additional columns or rows.

• border: boolean (default: false)

  If true, this group will have a border and a different color background to its parent.

  This allows you to add a distinctive border between components, without needing to set a header, add header components, or make it collapsible.

• title: string (optional)

  If set, will display a title as a header at the top of the group.

• editableTitle: boolean (default: false)

  If true, will allow the user to click on the title to change it, which will trigger a callback to the listener onTitleChanged.

• defaultCollapsibleState: 'open' | 'closed' | 'auto' (optional, default: undefined)

  If set, will allow the user to expand / collapse the given group, by default set to the given state.

  Whether a group is open or closed is independent on a per-client basis, and a fresh page reload will set the collapsible state to the default set here.

• labels: { text: string }[] | null (default: null)

  Adds labels next to the title in the group header.

Special Child Components

• GroupHeader

  You can add components to the header of a group by wrapping them in a <GroupHeader/> component directly under the <Group/>.

  You can add as many separate GroupHeader components as needed throughout a <Group> component's direct children, and all nested components will be placed in the header.

  Currently GroupHeader only supports rendering the following children:

  • Button

TODO: example

Label

TODO

Rect

TODO

SliderButton

TODO

Switch

TODO

Tabs

TODO

TextInput

TODO

Timeline

TODO

Examples

For a comprehensive list of examples, please see the example directory in the arcane monorepo: https://github.com/arcanejs/arcanejs/tree/main/examples/react

Example Philips Hue App

Check out this example repository that uses @arcanejs/react-toolkit to create an app that can be used to control a Philips Hue Bridge on your local network.

Status / Suitability / Security Disclaimer

This project is experimental, and takes advantage of unstable react APIs exposed via react-render. It's not suitable for production or commercial projects yet, especially those that rely on regular updates of dependencies for security reasons, as usage of this project may make it difficult to keep react up-to-date (that being said, the license does not prohibit this, so feel free to at-your-own-risk).

There are also no authentication mechanisms implemented yet, so be careful when exposing your control panels over the network, as this will allow anyone to interact with your processes.