decorative-react.js

...is an ES7 micro-framework promoting @decorator pattern-driven app development using react.

Using decorators means to write:

• less lines
• less complex
• better maintainable
• better readable
• more loosely coupled code.

It's really "decorative" code you will write using @decorators ;)

Decorators were introduced to Babel.js in spring 2015 by Yehuda Katz. Since then, only a few decorators were implemented (see core-decorators). But the world didn't care much, no matter if they are amazing or not.

When I discovered the es7.decorators I realized the power they could bring to my web apps and I began to implement decorative.js.

decorative.js is currently under development but already used to develop a web app which I will release soon. I rely on this framework and it's toolchain (Babel.js) and it works stable for my use-cases. I can't guarantee that it fully works for you but I think it's worth a try or at least a quick look.

decorative-react.js adds some more decorators, specifically for react development on top of the set of decorators provided by decorative.js.

https://github.com/kyr0/decorative-react

Reading the docs of decorative.js before starting to use decorative-react definitely saves you some headaches :)

React decorators

The decorators described in this section can be understood as additions to the set of decorators already available through decorative.js. Both micro-frameworks in combination can be used as building blocks of a modern web application.

Just install this package like this:

npm install decorative-react --save

for your convenience it brings you the whole decorative lib as a dependency.

@Component()

Transforms the decorated class into a React.Component. Therefore it extends from that base class and applies the code required to let a genuine ES6 class act nicely as a React component.

  import { Component } from 'decorative-react';
  
  @Component()
  class MyButton {
      
  }
  

Limitation: The @Component() decoration should always be the first on a class (see @InitialState)

@Style(JSS:Object)

Assigns a JSS stylesheet object to a Component. The reference to this object is then available in the JSX template via an additional argument (see @Template).

  import { Component, Style } from 'decorative-react';
  import JSS from './MyButton.jss';
  
  @Style(JSS)
  @Component()
  class MyButton {
      
  }
  

A JSS stylesheet file like MyButton.jss is a plain, exported JavaScript object:

export default {

    myButton: {
        'margin': '50px',
        'box-shadow': '0px 0px 50px rgba(0,0,0, 0.5)',
        'border-radius': '5px 5px 5px 5px'
    }
};

For more information regarding JSS take a look at the JSS repo:

https://github.com/TODO

@Template(JSX:Function)

Injects a JSX template into the Component and mixes a default render() method into the class prototype.

import { Component, Style } from 'decorative-react';
import JSS from './MyButton.jss';
import JSX from './MyButton.jsx';
  
@Template(JSX)  
@Style(JSS)
@Component()
class MyButton {
      
}

A JSX file like MyButton.jsx then could be implemented externally like this:

import React from 'react';
export default function(state:Object, classes:Object, i18n:Object) {

    return <button disabled={state.isButtonDisabled} className=classes.myButton>{i18n['loginButtonLabel']} {this.props.fooBar}</button>
}

Well, this is a template which is already using all the features of all decorators: state, JSS classes and the translation object. A lot of boilerplate code is unnecessary now. There is no syntax error in this example: You can directly return JSX without any function call wrapping!

Limitation: If the arguments are available depends on which decorators you've applied to the Component class.

@InitialState(state:Object)

Injects the initial state into a Component. This way you won't have to write a method for it.

import { Component, Style } from 'decorative-react';
import JSS from './MyButton.jss';
import JSX from './MyButton.jsx';
  
@Template(JSX)  
@Style(JSS)
@InitialState({
    isButtonDisabled: true
})
@Component()
class MyButton {
      
}

Well, as you can see we now come to a sophisticated button class without writing a single line of boilerplate code!

@EventHandler()

Wraps event handler methods of a component and calls them auto-binded to the components scope and with the event.target as the first argument. Btw. it makes clear which methods are interacting directly with JSX.

import { Component, Style } from 'decorative-react';
import JSS from './MyButton.jss';
import JSX from './MyButton.jsx';
  
@Template(JSX)  
@Style(JSS)
@InitialState({
    isButtonDisabled: false
})
@Component()
class MyButton {
      
    @EventHandler()
    onClick(buttonEl, syntheticEvent) {
      
        this.setState({
            isButtonDisabled: true
        });
    }
}

Roadmap

Although a lot has been implemented, there is still a lot to do and you are very welcome to push :)

Features planned to be introduced in the near future:

• Please create an issue regarding your own feature requests