Create Mendix Widget

Create Mendix Widget with one command.

• Requirements
• Usage
• Development
• Build

Create Mendix Widget works on macOS, Windows, and Linux. If something doesn’t work, please [file an issue](https://github.com/hm-mx/create-mendix-widget/issues/new . Please DONOT file issues regarding this tool to Mendix support, or asking questions in Mendix Forum.

Why

This project is not affiliated with Mendix. It is a personal project developed for research purposes. Use this widget creator at your own risk.

Mendix is moving from Dojo to React very soon. From version 7.13.1 and above, you can already build widgets in React without Dojo. Pluggable widget is awesome, but it is only available on Mendix 8. From version 7.13.1 or higher, Mendix has an experimental API that allows you to use widgets in React without Dojo. Before you upgrade to Mendix 8, you might already want to rebuild your Dojo widgets in React. Later you can easily copy the React code and paste it into Pluggable Widget template.

If you want to use hooks, you can choose DOJO wrapper with Preact, which bundles Preact in a DOJO widgert, so that you can freely use the latest syntax. I have tried this approach on Production, and it works pretty well. However, the size of Preact is ~3k. Donot use this approach is you cannot tolerate 3k more bundle size.

Requirements

• NodeJS
• Mendix version 7.13.1 or above (also works on Mendix 8)
• Git

NOTE: the current version of React in Mendix is 16.6.3, meaning that you cannot use React hooks in your Mendix widgets just yet. If you choose DOJO wrapper with Preact, then you don't have this limitation (but you will have ~3k more bundle size).

Installation

First, Install create-mendix-widget globally.

npm i -g create-mendix-widget

Usage

Run the following command followed by the name of your new widget.

create-mendix-widget awesome-widget

If you have an existing folder

cd awesome-widget
create-mendix-widget .

You will be prompted with several questions to initialize your new widget. It will generate the boilerplate and install dependencies.

Next, follow the instruction to navigate to the folder of your newly-created widget and you are ready to build your new widget!

Development

In the root folder of your widget, you can find dev.config.js. DO NOT change the content of this file. This file serves as a fallback, and it should be part of the code base.

To allow local development, create dev.config.local.js next to dev.config.js and change the content according to your local settings.

// dev.config.local.js
// normally you only need to overwrite the path
module.exports = {
  mxProjectRootDir: '/Users/johndoe/Documents/Mendix/MyAwesomeMendixApp',
};

You don't need to commit dev.config.local.js (it is git-ignored by default). This setup is to prevent exposing personal local configurations to the code base.

After creating dev.config.local.js, you need to build your widget as follows:

npm run build

It will generate the mpk file and put it into your Mendix app. If it builds successfully, you should be able to find your new widget in your Mendix Studio Pro. Drag it into your app as you normally do. Then run your Mendix app locally.

Finally, run the following command to spin up the dev server. It will automatically open your browser and go to http://localhost:3000 (or if you configure it differently in your dev.config.local.js).

npm run start

This command will watch any changes you make, and trigger an unoptimized build with source maps. Your browser will automatically reload your app (However, HMR is not yet supported). Then you can see your widget in action.

Build

Once you finished development, remember to run build script again.

npm run build

It will build an optimized (minified & uglified) version of your widget without source maps, and directly put it into your Mendix app.

Writing Your React Widget

We try to align the environment settings of the widget as close as possible with the industry standard. You can develop the widget just like a normal React component. However, the current version of React in Mendix is 16.6.3, meaning that you cannot use React hooks just yet.

For testing, we use jest and react-testing-library by default. You need to configure it yourself if you want to use other testing libraries.

Issues

If something doesn’t work, please file an issue.

Acknowledgements

This project is forked from Osama Najjar's create-hyper-mendix-widget

License

create-mendix-widget is licensed as MIT.