lexical-beautiful-mentions

Demo

A mentions plugin for the lexical editor. lexical is an extendable text editor for the web build by Meta. While the lexical playground offers a basic mentions plugin for demo purposes, this plugin is more advanced and offers more features.

• Customizable triggers: Use characters, words or regular expressions as triggers for mentions.
• Multiple triggers: You can define multiple triggers (e.g. @ and #).
• Editing mentions outside the editor: Programmatically insert, delete, or rename mentions via the useBeautifulMentions hook.
• Automatic spacing: The plugin automatically adds spaces around the mentions, which makes it easier for the user to continue typing.
• Adding new mentions: You can allow users to create new mentions that are not in the suggestion list.
• Async query function: You can use an async query function to provide mentions for the suggestion list.
• Additional metadata: You can add additional metadata to the mention items, which will be included in the mention nodes when serializing the editor content.
• Customizable mention style: You can change the look of the mentions via the editor theme to match the style of your application.
• Custom menu and menu item: You can customize the look and behavior of the menu that displays the mention suggestions.
• Custom mention component: You can replace the default mention component with a custom component of your choice.

Installation

To install the plugin, run the following command:

// with npm
npm install lexical-beautiful-mentions

// with yarn
yarn add lexical-beautiful-mentions

You also need to install the lexical and @lexical/react, which is a peer dependency of this plugin.

Usage

Import the BeautifulMentionsPlugin plugin:

import { BeautifulMentionsPlugin, BeautifulMentionNode } from "lexical-beautiful-mentions";

Add the plugin to the lexical editor:

import { LexicalComposer } from "@lexical/react/LexicalComposer";
import { RichTextPlugin } from "@lexical/react/LexicalRichTextPlugin";

const mentionItems = {
  "@": ["Anton", "Boris", "Catherine", "Dmitri", "Elena", "Felix", "Gina"],
  "#": ["Apple", "Banana", "Cherry", "Date", "Elderberry", "Fig", "Grape"],
  "due:": ["Today", "Tomorrow", "01-01-2023"],
};

const editorConfig = {
  // ...
  nodes: [BeautifulMentionNode] // 👈 register the mention node
};

return (
  <LexicalComposer initialConfig={editorConfig}>
    <RichTextPlugin // 👈 use the RichTextPlugin to get clipboard support for mentions
      contentEditable={/* ... */}
      placeholder={/* ... */}
      ErrorBoundary={/* ... */}
    />
    <BeautifulMentionsPlugin // 👈 add the mentions plugin
      items={mentionItems}
    />
    {/** ... */}
  </LexicalComposer>
);

Customize mention style

import { BeautifulMentionsTheme } from "lexical-beautiful-mentions";
// ...
const beautifulMentionsTheme: BeautifulMentionsTheme = {
  // 👇 use the trigger name as the key
  "@": "px-1 mx-px ...",
  // 👇 add the "Focused" suffix to style the focused mention
  "@Focused": "outline-none shadow-md ...",
  // 👇 use a class configuration object for advanced styling
  "due:": {
    trigger: "text-blue-400 ...",
    value: "text-orange-400 ...",
    container: "px-1 mx-px ...",
    containerFocused: "outline-none shadow-md ...",
  },
}
// 👇 add the mention theme to the editor theme
const editorConfig = {
  // ...
  theme: {
    // ...
    beautifulMentions: beautifulMentionsTheme,
  },
};

// ...

return (
  <LexicalComposer initialConfig={editorConfig}>
    {/** ... */}
  </LexicalComposer>
);

Custom mention node and component

If applying styles via the theme is not enough, you can replace the BeautifulMentionNode by using the lexical Node Overrides API. This allows you to change the default behavior of the mention node:

export class CustomMentionsNode extends BeautifulMentionNode {
  static getType() {
    return "custom-beautifulMention";
  }
  static clone(node: CustomBeautifulMentionNode) {
    // TODO: implement
  }
  static importJSON(serializedNode: SerializedBeautifulMentionNode) {
    // TODO: implement
  }
  exportJSON(): SerializedBeautifulMentionNode {
    // TODO: implement
  }
  component(): ElementType<BeautifulMentionComponentProps> | null {
    // the component that renders the mention in the editor
    // return null to use the default component
    // 💡 if you only want to replace the component use the `createBeautifulMentionNode` helper method. See below for more details 👇
  }
  decorate(editor: LexicalEditor, config: EditorConfig): React.JSX.Element {
    // TODO: implement
  }
}
const editorConfig = {
  // ...
  nodes: [
    // Don't forget to register your custom node separately!
    CustomMentionsNode,
    {
      replace: BeautifulMentionNode, 
      with: (node: BeautifulMentionNode) => {
        return new CustomMentionsNode(
          node.getTrigger(),
          node.getValue(),
          node.getData(),
        );
      }
    }
  ]
}

The plugin also provides a helper method that overrides the default BeautifulMentionNode and uses a customized version with a component of your choice:

const CustomMentionComponent = forwardRef<
  HTMLDivElement,
  BeautifulMentionComponentProps<MyData>
>(({ trigger, value, data: myData, children, ...other }, ref) => {
  return (
    <div {...other} ref={ref} title={trigger + value}>
      {value}
    </div>
  );
});
const editorConfig = {
  // ...
  nodes: [...createBeautifulMentionNode(CustomMentionComponent)],
};

Custom menu and menu item component

function CustomMenu({ loading, ...props }: BeautifulMentionsMenuProps) {
  <ul
    className="m-0 mt-6 ..."
    {...props}
  />
}

const CustomMenuItem = forwardRef<
  HTMLLIElement,
  BeautifulMentionsMenuItemProps
>(({ selected, item, ...props }, ref) => (
  <li
    className={`m-0 flex ... ${selected ? "bg-gray-100 ..." : "bg-white ..."}`}
    {...props}
    ref={ref}
  />
));

// ...

<BeautifulMentionsPlugin
  items={mentionItems}
  menuComponent={CustomMenu}
  menuItemComponent={CustomMenuItem}
/>

Additional metadata

Additional metadata can be used to uniquely identify mentions by adding an id or any other unique property to the mention items. When serializing the editor content, the metadata will be included in the mention nodes:

const mentionItems = {
  "@": [
    { value: "Catherine", id: "1", email: "[email protected]" },
    { value: "Catherine", id: "2", email: "[email protected]" },
    // ...
  ],
};

Serializes to the following lexical nodes:

 [
   {
     "trigger": "@",
     "value": "Catherine",
     "data": {
       "id": "1",
       "email": "[email protected]"
     },
     "type": "beautifulMention",
     "version": 1
   },
   {
     "trigger": "@",
     "value": "Catherine",
     "data": {
       "id": "2",
       "email": "[email protected]"
     },
     "type": "beautifulMention",
     "version": 1
   }
 ]

All additional metadata are available as props of the BeautifulMentionsMenuItem component:

const CustomMenuItem = forwardRef<
  HTMLLIElement,
  BeautifulMentionsMenuItemProps
>(({ item: { data: { id, email }}, ...props }, ref) => (
 <li
  // ...
 />
));

Empty state

The plugin allows you to display a custom component when the mention menu is empty and no search results are found:

const Empty = () => (
  <div className="top-[2px] m-0 min-w-[10rem] overflow-hidden ...">
    No results found.
  </div>
);

// ...

<BeautifulMentionsPlugin
  // ...
  menuComponent={CustomMenu}
  menuItemComponent={CustomMenuItem}
  emptyComponent={Empty} // 👈
/>

Programmatically insert, delete, or rename mentions

import {
  BeautifulMentionsPlugin,
  useBeautifulMentions,
} from "lexical-beautiful-mentions";

// ...

function MentionsToolbar() {
  const { removeMentions, insertMention } = useBeautifulMentions();
  return (
    <div className="grid gap-2 grid-cols-2">
      <Button onClick={() => removeMentions({ trigger: "#", value: "urgent" })}>
        Remove Mention
      </Button>
      <Button onClick={() => insertMention({ trigger: "#", value: "work" })}>
        Insert Mention
      </Button>
    </div>
  );
}

// ...

return (
  <LexicalComposer>
    {/** ... */}
    <BeautifulMentionsPlugin
      items={mentionItems}
    />
    <MentionsToolbar />
    {/** ... */}
  </LexicalComposer>
);

Creating new mentions

By default, the plugin allows users to create new mentions that are not in the suggestion list.

Customize the text of the menu item that allows users to create new mentions:

<BeautifulMentionsPlugin
  items={mentionItems}
  creatable={`Add user "{{name}}"`} // 👈 the `{{name}}` placeholder contains the current search query
/>

Hide the menu item that allows users to create new mentions:

<BeautifulMentionsPlugin
  items={mentionItems}
  creatable={false} // 👈 hide the menu item that allows users to create new mentions
/>

Async query function

const queryMentions = async (trigger: string, query: string) => {
  const response = await fetch(
    `https://example.com/api/mentions?trigger=${trigger}&query=${query}`
  );
  const data = await response.json();
  return data as string[];
};

// ...

return (
  <LexicalComposer>
    {/** ... */}
    <BeautifulMentionsPlugin
      triggers={["@", "#"]} // needed to tell the plugin when to call the query function
      onSearch={queryMentions}
    />
    {/** ... */}
  </LexicalComposer>
);

Mention Detection

You can customize the regular expression that looks for mentions in your text by using the punctuation and preTriggerChars properties.

Punctuation

The punctuation property allows you to specify the punctuation characters that can appear directly after a mention. So that you can type for example @Alice. without the dot being part of the mention. The default value contains a common set of punctuation characters.

PreTriggerChars

The preTriggerChars property allows you to specify a set of characters that can appear directly before the trigger character. By default, only the open bracket is allowed (e.g. (@Alice)).

Utility Functions for Mention Conversion

The plugin provides two utility functions to help with converting text to mention nodes:

$convertToMentionNodes

This function converts a string or a text node into a list of mention and text nodes.

Usage example:

import { $convertToMentionNodes } from 'lexical-beautiful-mentions';

const text = "Hello @Alice and #world";
const nodes = $convertToMentionNodes(text, ['@', '#']);
// nodes will be an array of TextNodes and BeautifulMentionNodes

$transformTextToMentionNodes

This function transforms text nodes in the editor that contain mention strings into mention nodes.

Usage example:

import { $transformTextToMentionNodes } from 'lexical-beautiful-mentions';

editor.update(() => {
  $transformTextToMentionNodes(['@', '#']);
});

Note: Both functions only work for mentions without spaces. Ensure spaces are disabled via the allowSpaces prop.