ruxp

Reactive UXP

ruxp is a light wrapper over Adobe UXP's setup() API that lets you define your plug-in's entry points using React components, rather than a clunky, static object and disgusting helper classes. A simple set-up looks like this:

import { useState } from "react"
import { createRoot } from "react-dom/client"
import { Plugin, Panel, Item, Command } from "ruxp"

const MyPlugin = () => {
    const [good, setGood] = useState(true)
    const doGood = () => setGood(true)
    const doBad = () => setGood(false)

    return (
        <Plugin>
            <Panel id="nicePanel">
                <NicePanel good={good} />
                <Item label="Do something...">
                    <Item label="...good" checked={good} onInvoke={doGood} />
                    <Item label="...bad" checked={!good} onInvoke={doBad} />
                </Item>
            </Panel>
            <Command id="doGood" onInvoke={doGood} />
            <Command id="doBad" onInvoke={doBad} />
        </Plugin>
    )
}

// (you could just put your state and menu items down here)
const NicePanel = ({ good }) => <p>i'm {good ? "good" : "bad"}</p>

createRoot(document.querySelector("#root")).render(<MyPlugin />)

Compare it to the equivalent vanilla code

import { entrypoints } from "uxp"
import { createRoot } from "react-dom/client"
import { useState, useEffect, useSyncExternalStore } from "react"

entrypoints.setup({
    panels: {
        nicePanel: {
            create(root) {
                createRoot(root).render(<NicePanel />)
            },
            menuItems: [
                {
                    id: "doSomething",
                    label: "Do something...",
                    submenu: [
                        { id: "doSomethingGood", label: "...good", checked: true },
                        { id: "doSomethingBad", label: "...bad" }
                    ]
                }
            ],
            invokeMenu(id) {
                if (id == "doSomethingGood") goodness.doGood()
                else if (id == "doSomethingBad") goodness.doBad()
            }
        }
    },
    commands: {
        doGood: {
            run: () => goodness.doGood()
        },
        doBad: {
            run: () => goodness.doBad()
        }
    }
})

// (this is a "store")
const goodness = {
    state: true,
    doGood: () => ((this.state = true), this.update?.()),
    doBad: () => ((this.state = false), this.update?.())
}

function NicePanel() {
    const good = useSyncExternalStore(
        cb => {
            goodness.update = cb
            return () => delete goodness.update
        },
        () => goodness.state
    )

    useEffect(() => {
        const getItem = id => entrypoints.getPanel("nicePanel").menuItems.getItem(id)
        getItem("doSomethingGood").checked = good
        getItem("doSomethingBad").checked = !good
    }, [good])

    return <p>i'm {good ? "good" : "bad"}</p>
}

(At this point, you'd want to use a global state management library). In this case, you don't actually need to useEffect because the state lives outside, but it helps to illustrate what it would look like if you needed to derive UXP state from existing React state.

---

This not only lets you use the nicer-looking JSX for configuration, but it also makes mutating properties reactively and providing event handlers a breeze through a declarative API, all while sharing a common React root and its corollaries, such as context and state.

Installation

npm i ruxp

Usage

ruxp only exposes a few React components, which you can use to configure and manage your plug-in.

• Plugin
• Panel
• Item
• Command

Plugin

This is the root component that defines your plug-in and should only contain entry point components (Panel or Command) and root-level mark-up. It should generally be at the top of your component tree.

const MyPlugin = () => (
    <Plugin>
        <div className="h-full text-[white]">
            <Panel {...} />
        </div>
        <Command {...} />
    </Plugin>
)

Panel

This component registers a panel entry point within your plug-in. It contains everything that should be rendered inside of the panel.

• id string: The unique panel identifier, as specified in the manifest file.
• children? ReactNode: The contents of this panel, plus any menu items.
• render? ComponentType: A component to render inside of this panel. Generally, you should pass children directly; this prop is only useful if you want to separate your DOM rendering logic from your menu rendering logic.
• gripper? boolean: Displays a resize gripper in the bottom-right corner of the panel. Available from Photoshop 23.1.

<Panel id="nicePanel">
    <Item label="hey" />
    <p>this is a nice panel for sure</p>
</Panel>

<Panel id="myPanel" render={MyPanel} />

Item

This component displays a menu item inside of a panel menu, or inside of a sub-menu if it is nested.

• label string: The label this menu item will display.
• checked? boolean: Displays a checkmark next to the menu item.
• disabled? boolean: Displays the item grayed out.
• onInvoke? () => void: A handler to execute when the menu item is invoked.

or, for parent items:

• label string: The label that this sub-menu will display.
• children ReactNode: The items inside this sub-menu.

or, for item separators:

• separator true: Marks this item as a separator; a thin horizontal line useful to group items together.

const MyPanel = () => {
    const [sub, setSub] = useState(false)
    return (
        <Panel id="myPanel">
            <Item label="nice item" onInvoke={() => setSub(!sub)} />
            {sub && <Item label="nice sub-menu">
                <Item label="i agree" checked onInvoke={...} />
                <Item separator />
                <Item label="i don't" disabled />
            </Item>}
        </Panel>
    )
}

[!NOTE] When reactively mutating menu items in any way, make sure that the entire menu re-renders, so that each item has a chance to re-register in the correct order.

For example:

const MyMenu = () => (
    <>
        <Item label="First" />
        <CheckableItem />
        <Item label="Last" />
    </>
)

const CheckableItem = () => {
    const [checked, setChecked] = useState(false)
    return <Item checked={checked} onInvoke={() => setChecked(!checked)} />
}

Once you click on the middle item, you will see that it gets moved all the way to the bottom. This is because every item re-registers itself in the parent menu every time it renders, so the checkable item un-registers and re-registers, and so gets placed at the end—the items have no way of knowing where they are. Instead, your entire MyMenu component should update, so that all of its item children re-register in order:

const MyMenu = () => {
    const [checked, setChecked] = useState(false)
    return (
        <>
            <Item label="First" />
            <Item checked={checked} onInvoke={() => setChecked(!checked)} />
            <Item label="Last" />
        </>
    )
}

This is an annoying limitation, but it is hopefully not that bad because most panel menus and sub-menus are simple enough to be kept in one component. In the future, though, the implementation might change to only re-register when necessary (i.e. when items are added or re-ordered), and mutate in-place elsewhere.

---

Command

This component registers a command entry point within the parent plug-in. Its only feature is an event handler.

• id string: The unique command identifier, as specified in the manifest file.
• onInvoke () => void: A handler to execute when the command is invoked.

<Command id="myCommand" onInvoke={() => console.log("my command invoked!")} />

License

This project is under the MIT License.