uiblox-rbxts

This package is a work in progress.

UI library and theming for roblox-ts projects.

Background

Roblox has their own internal design system, coined "uiblox-web", that it uses for its new web-facing products. This system offers reusable components, implemented in React Typescript, that are derived from material UI (MUI). As well, it offers a common theme/pallete for consistent UI/UX.

Anyone is able to view their design system as UIBlox-Web. You can see that they leverage Storybook, a UI component explorer for frontend developers, to render component previews.

Design systems all help engineers cut down on implementation time and ensure consitent UX across products.

Overview

So what is uiblox-rbxts? Simply put, its my stab at a design system that mimics uiblox-web for games written using roblox-ts.

UIBlox-rbxts aims to provide extensible components that can be reusable by anyone who installs this npm package. It also offers a theme and styling system that aids UI/UX consistentency.

How does it do this? Well, there are two main exports from this package:

• @rbxts/uiblox -> theme
  • An extensible Theme type + default Dark (default) and Light themes
    • ... Light theme palette is a WIP
  • makeStyles/createStyles utilities to serve up Instance-extended property tables that can be applied to your Roact Components
  • ThemeProvider which can wrap your application and uses Rodux to tell sub-components which theme to style off of (via makeStyles)
    • Uses Rodux
• @rbxts/uiblox -> ui
  • Packaged and reusable typed Roact components

How to use

Installation

Install the package to get started.

npm install @rbxts/uiblox

Example

Below is an example usage of how you could use ThemeProvider, makeStyles/createStyles, and a Button component. This is just an example of how to mount and configure your UI -- you can set things up however you want (so long as it works...).

Shared

You can house all of your components within shared.

src/shared/ui/app/App.tsx

The top-level class for our UI. Loads the actual ApplLayout into ScreenGui. This is what we later pass to Roact.mount().

import Roact, { Component } from "@rbxts/roact";

class App extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <screengui IgnoreGuiInset ZIndexBehavior={Enum.ZIndexBehavior.Global}>
        <AppLayout />
      </screengui>
    );
  }
}

export default App;

src/shared/ui/app/AppLayout.tsx

Start actually adding in components to render, but wrap them in a ThemeProvider. Here I just use DarkTheme, which is also exported as DefaultTheme. If no theme is provided, it would use DarkTheme anyways. If the theme prop changes, then sub-components will be re-rendered with the new theme.

You can also choose to create your own theme with the Theme interface exported from @rbxts/uiblox.

import Roact, { Component } from "@rbxts/roact";
import { Storyblox } from "shared/ui/storyblox";
import { DarkTheme, ThemeProvider } from "@rbxts/uiblox";
import usePageLayoutStyles from "./PageLayout.styles";

class AppLayout extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <ThemeProvider theme={DarkTheme}>
        <frame
          Key={"AppLayout"}
          Size={new UDim2(1, 0, 1, 0)}
          BackgroundTransparency={1}
        >
          <MyComponent />
        </frame>
      </ThemeProvider>
    );
  }
}

export default AppLayout;

src/shared/ui/myComponent/MyComponent.tsx

My actual component. Just loads a dummy button and passes props to be used to make styles.

If you omit the props type from myStyles usage in the styles file, then you can omit props without a type warning (i.e. makeStyles(theme => {}) instead of makeStyles<MyComponentProps>((theme, props) => {})).

import Roact from "@rbxts/roact";
import { useState, markPureComponent } from "@rbxts/roact-hooked";
import useMyComponentStyles from "./MyComponent.styles";
import { Button } from "@rbxts/uiblox";

export interface MyComponentProps {
  title?: string;
  bolded?: boolean;
  transparent?: boolean;
}

// Hooked components are very handy
function MyComponent(props: MyComponentProps) {
  const { title, bolded = false } = props;
  const { root, button } = useMyComponentStyles(props);

  return (
    <frame Key="MyComponent" {...root}>
      <Button
        variant="outlined"
        text={title}
        size="small"
        color="secondary"
        family={bolded ? "bold" : "default"}
        className={button}
      ></Button>
    </frame>
  );
};

export default markPureComponent(MyComponent);

src/shared/ui/myComponent/MyComponent.styles.ts

Actually compute styles based on theme and props. You can simplify the arrow function if you do not care about props and just directly return createStyles.

For more complex dendencies, you'd likely use some helper methods within the arrow function of makeStyles (i.e. makeRootStyles()).

Make sure that the type given to each style matches the component it will be applied to (i.e. frameStyles: { ... } as WriteableStyle<Frame> => <frame {...frameStyles} />).

import { createStyles, Icons, makeStyles, ROBLOX_UI_OFFSET, Theme, WriteableStyle } from "@rbxts/uiblox";
import { MyComponentProps } from "./MyComponent";

const useMyComponentStyles = makeStyles<MyComponentProps>((theme: Theme, props: MyComponentProps) => {
  const { transparent = false } = props; // Defaults to false
  const transparency = transparent ? 1 : 0;

  return createStyles({
    root: {
      Size: new UDim2(0, theme.spacing.calc(6), 0, theme.spacing.calc(6)),
      BackgroundColor3: Color3.fromRGB(0, 0, 0),
      BackgroundTransparency: transparency,
      BorderSizePixel: 0,
      ClipsDescendants: true,
      ZIndex: 100,
    } as WriteableStyle<Frame>,
    button: {
      Position: new UDim2(0.5, theme.padding.calc(2), 0.5, theme.padding.calc(2)),
      AnchorPoint: new Vector2(0.5, 0.5),
      ZIndex: 200,
    } as WriteableStyle<TextButton>
  })
});

export default useMyComponentStyles;

Client

Some sample logic for mounting app when player spawns (on client).

src/client/Controllers/Apploader.tsx

Mount the App in the LocalPlayer's PlayerGui.

import Roact, { Tree } from "@rbxts/roact";
import { Players } from "@rbxts/services";
import { App } from "shared/ui/App";

class AppLoader {
	protected _tree: Tree | undefined;

	Mount() {
		const playerGui = Players.LocalPlayer.FindFirstChild("PlayerGui") as PlayerGui;

		const appComponent = <App />;
		this._tree = Roact.mount(appComponent, playerGui, "App");
		print("App mounted");
	}

	Unmount() {
		if (this._tree) {
			Roact.unmount(this._tree);
			print("App unmounted");
		}
	}
}

export default AppLoader;

src/client/main.client.ts

When the client loads, call our AppLoader() to mount the UI.

import { AppLoader } from "./Controllers";

// Load the UI App
new AppLoader().Mount();

Future work

• More UI packages
• Finish palette for LightTheme

See Also

• Storyblox a UI component explorer for roblox-ts developers
  • Test it out here Storyblox Pre-Release Experience
  • Similar to hoarcekat by Kampfkarren