⚛ React Checkbox Context

This package was heavily inspired by react-checkbox-group after it stopped working the way I used it. <Checkbox /> elements suddenly had to be direct children of <CheckboxGroup> (which was impossible for my use case) or the CheckboxGroup explicitly needed to have a checkboxDepth prop (which was not flexible enough for me). So I decided to write my own <CheckboxGroup> component based on React's (then) new Context API.

Big thank you to Ziad Saab for the inspiration!

Installation

npm install react-checkbox-context

or

yarn add react-checkbox-context

Example

What does react-checkbox-context do and how does it do that? Let me borrow the example from react-checkbox-group since the API is mostly identical:

This is your average checkbox group:

<form>
    <input onChange={this.handleFruitChange} type="checkbox" name="fruit" value="apple" /> Apple
    <input onChange={this.handleFruitChange} type="checkbox" name="fruit" value="orange" /> Orange
    <input onChange={this.handleFruitChange} type="checkbox" name="fruit" value="watermelon" />{' '}
    Watermelon
</form>

Repetitive, hard to manipulate and easily desynchronized. Lift up name and onChange, and give the group an initial checked values array:

import { Checkbox, CheckboxGroup } from 'react-checkbox-context';
 
<CheckboxGroup name="fruits" values={['kiwi', 'pineapple']}>
    <Checkbox value="kiwi" /> Kiwi
    <Checkbox value="pineapple" /> Pineapple
    <Checkbox value="watermelon" /> Watermelon
</CheckboxGroup>;

Since this component uses React's Context API, <Checkbox> elements can by anywhere inside of a <CheckboxGroup> and do not have to be a direct descendant! So this is easily possible without having to specify any checkboxDepth props or the like:

<CheckboxGroup
    name="frameworks"
    onChange={(event, selectedValues) => {
        console.log(selectedValues);
    }}
>
    <p>
        <label htmlFor="react">
            <Checkbox value="react" id="react" /> React
        </label>
    </p>
    <p>
        <label htmlFor="vue">
            <Checkbox value="vue" id="vue" /> Vue
        </label>
    </p>
</CheckboxGroup>

Attention: When migrating from react-checkbox-group please note that the prop name to pass the values to a CheckboxGroup is named values instead of value.

Props

<CheckboxGroup />

Prop	Type	Description
onChange	(event: ChangeEvent, values: string[]) => void	Will be called on every time a checkbox changes its state.
name	string	Name for all checkboxes within one <CheckboxGroup>
values	string[]	Values of the <Checkbox> elements marked as checked

Status of checkboxes (checked/unchecked) can be controlled from outside by passing new values to <CheckboxGroup> (e.g. <CheckboxGroup values={this.state.checkedItems} />).

<Checkbox />

The Checkbox component passes all of its props the the underlying <input type="checkbox" /> element. All valid HTML attributes can be used with the exception of checked, name, onChange as they will be set by the parent <CheckboxGroup> component.

Todo

• Add more tests, more specifically a test if onChange events are fired correctly.

License

MIT.