React Component Library

This project skeleton was created to help people get started with creating their own React component library using:

• Rollup
• Sass
• TypeScript

It also features:

• Storybook to help you create and show off your components
• Jest and React Testing Library enabling testing of the components

Read my blog post about why and how I created this project skeleton ▸

Development

Testing

npm run test

Building

npm run build

Storybook

To run a live-reload Storybook server on your local machine:

npm run storybook

To export your Storybook as static files:

npm run storybook:export

You can then serve the files under storybook-static using S3, GitHub pages, Express etc. I've hosted this library at: https://www.harveydelaney.com/react-component-library

Generating New Components

I've included a handy NodeJS util file under util called create-component.js. Instead of copy pasting components to create a new component, you can instead run this command to generate all the files you need to start building out a new component. To use it:

npm run generate YourComponentName

This will generate:

/src
  /YourComponentName
    YourComponentName.tsx
    YourComponentName.stories.tsx
    YourComponentName.test.tsx
    YourComponentName.types.ts
    YourComponentName.scss

The default templates for each file can be modified under util/templates.

Don't forget to add the component to your index.ts exports if you want the library to export the component!

Installing Component Library Locally

Let's say you have another project (test-app) on your machine that you want to try installing the component library into without having to first publish the component library. In the test-app directory, you can run:

npm i --save ../react-component-library

which will install the local component library as a dependency in test-app. It'll then appear as a dependency in package.json like:

  ...
  "dependencies": {
    ...
    "react-component-library": "file:../react-component-library",
    ...
  },
  ...

Your components can then be imported and used in that project.

Publishing

First, make sure you have an NPM account and are logged into NPM using the npm login command.

Then update the name field in package.json to reflect your NPM package name in your private or public NPM registry. Then run:

npm publish

Usage

Let's say you created a public NPM package called harvey-component-library with the TestComponent component created in this repository.

Usage of the component (after the library installed as a dependency into another project) will be:

import React from "react";
import { TestComponent } from "harvey-component-library";

const App = () => (
  <div className="app-container">
    <h1>Hello I'm consuming the component library</h1>
    <TestComponent theme="primary" />
  </div>
);

export default App;

Check out this Code Sandbox for a live example.

Using Component Library SASS Variables

I've found that it's helpful to export SASS variables to projects consuming the library. As such, I've added the rollup-plugin-copy NPM package and used it to copy the typography.scss and variables.scss into the build directory as part of the Rollup bundle process. This allows you to use these variables in your projects consuming the component library.

For example, let's say you installed harvey-component-library into your project. To use the exported variables/mixins, in a SASS file you would do the following:

@import '~harvey-component-library/build/typography';

.example-container {
    @include heading;

    color: $harvey-white;
}

Can I code split my components?

Yes you can.

Read this section of my blog post to find out how.

Or check out this commit to see what changes are neccesary to implement it.