React Path Tracker

🐾 Easily track traveled paths on highly dynamic or recursive React trees.

Installation

npm install react-path-tracker

Motivation

I was once working on a layout builder for React which had some recursive needs; we had rows, which could have items, which could have rows of their own, and thus items of their own. Rendering was no big deal, but having the editing capability on this recursive tree was tricky. On each item, it was important to record what exactly was the path traveled to reach it, so that we could perform alterations such as dragging the item to a new location or resizing it. Thats why we created PathTracker, a lib with a render prop API pattern and no logic attached, so to make it easy to use regardless on what components are making the recursion happen.

How does it work

This project exposes a PathTracker component - responsible for registering the traveled path - and a PathConsumer component - responsible for accessing the registered path.

Usage

API

PathTracker

Prop	Type	Default	Description
path	Array	[]	Traveled path to register.
reset	Boolean	false	Reset path from this point down.
children	Element	null	React element.

PathConsumer

Prop	Type	Default	Description
children	Function	void	Function to render underlying elements (render prop).
children.args[0]	Array	[]	The currently registered traveled path.

Example

For the following code:

import { PathTracker, PathConsumer } from 'react-path-tracker'

const list = [
  { title: 'First', items: [{ title: 'First/First' }, { title: 'First/Second' }] },
  { title: 'Second', items: [{ title: 'Second/First', items: [{ title: 'Second/First/First' }] }] }
]

const List = ({ items = [] }) => (
  <ul>
    items.map(({ title, items }, index) => (
      <li key={ title }>
        <PathTracker path={ ['items', index] }>
          <Item title={ title } items={ items } />
        </PathTracker>
      </li>
    ))
  </ul>
)

const Item = ({ title, items = [] }) => (
  <PathConsumer>
    { path => (
      <div>
        <h3>{ title }</h3>
        Path: <pre>{ JSON.stringify(path) }</pre>
        { items.length && <List items={ items } /> }
      </div>
    ) }
  </PathConsumer>
)

render(<List items={ list } />)

...expect the following markup:

<ul>
  <li>
    <div>
      <h3>First</h3>
      Path: <pre>["items",0]</pre>
      <ul>
        <li>
          <div>
            <h3>First/First</h3>
            Path: <pre>["items",0,"items",0]</pre>
          </div>
        </li>
        <li>
          <div>
            <h3>First/Second</h3>
            Path: <pre>["items",0,"items",1]</pre>
          </div>
        </li>
      </ul>
    </div>
  </li>
    <li>
      <div>
        <h3>Second</h3>
        Path: <pre>["items",1]</pre>
        <ul>
          <li>
            <div>
              <h3>Second/First</h3>
              Path: <pre>["items",1,"items",0]</pre>
              <ul>
                <li>
                  <div>
                    <h3>Second/First/First</h3>
                    Path: <pre>["items",1,"items",0,"items",0]</pre>
                  </div>
                </li>
              </ul>
            </div>
          </li>
        </ul>
      </div>
    </li>
</ul>

License

Copyright (c) 2018 Lucas Constantino Silva

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.