✨ How To Build Your UI Components with React Portals Super Easy

Written by welly | Published 2020/05/10
Tech Story Tags: reactjs | react-hook | react-portals | open-source | programming | javascript | web-development | coding

TLDRvia the TL;DR App

Yo guys, I want to introduce react-cool-portal. It's a React.js hook for Portals. t helps you render children into a DOM node that exists outside the DOM hierarchy of the parent component. From now on you will never need to struggle with modals, dropdowns, tooltips etc. Check the features section out to learn more. Hope you guys 👍🏻 it.

Features

Usage

Here are some minimal examples of how does it work. You can learn more about it by checking the API out.
Basic Use Case
Inserts an element or component into a different location in the DOM.
import usePortal from "react-cool-portal";

const App = () => {
  const { Portal } = usePortal();

  return (
    <div>
      <Portal>
        <p>
          Wow! I am rendered outside the DOM hierarchy of my parent component.
        </p>
      </Portal>
    </div>
  );
};
By default, the children of portal is rendered into <div id="react-cool-portal"> of <body>. You can specify the DOM element you want through the containerId option.
import usePortal from "react-cool-portal";

const App = () => {
  const { Portal } = usePortal({ containerId: "my-portal-root" });

  return (
    <div>
      <Portal>
        <p>Now I am rendered into the specify element (id="my-portal-root").</p>
      </Portal>
    </div>
  );
};
Note: If the container element doesn't exist, we will create it for you.
Use with State
react-cool-portal provides many useful features, which enable you to build a component with state. For instance, modal, dropdown, tooltip, and so on.
import usePortal from "react-cool-portal";

const App = () => {
  const { Portal, isShow, show, hide, toggle } = usePortal({
    defaultShow: false, // The default visibility of portal, default is true
    onShow: (e) => {
      // Triggered when portal is shown
      // The event object will be the parameter of "show(e?)"
    },
    onHide: (e) => {
      // Triggered when portal is hidden
      // The event object will be the parameter of "hide(e?)", it maybe MouseEvent (on clicks outside) or KeyboardEvent (press ESC key)
    },
  });

  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={show}>Open Modal</button>
      <button onClick={hide}>Close Modal</button>
      <button onClick={toggle}>{isShow ? "Close" : "Open"} Modal</button>
      <Portal>
        <div className="modal" tabIndex={-1}>
          <div
            className="modal-dialog"
            role="dialog"
            aria-labelledby="modal-label"
            aria-modal="true"
          >
            <div className="modal-header">
              <h5 id="modal-label" className="modal-title">
                Modal title
              </h5>
            </div>
            <div className="modal-body">
              <p>Modal body text goes here.</p>
            </div>
          </div>
        </div>
      </Portal>
    </div>
  );
};
🧹 When no element in the container, we will remove it for you to avoid DOM mess.
The above example shows how easy you can handle the visibility of your component. You may ask how to handle the visibility with animations? No worries, you can disable the built-in show/hide functions by setting the internalShowHide option as false then handling the visibility of your component via the isShow state.
import usePortal from "react-cool-portal";

const App = () => {
  const { Portal, isShow, show, hide, toggle } = usePortal({
    defaultShow: false,
    internalShowHide: false, // Disable the built-in show/hide portal functions, default is true
    onShow: (e) => {
      // Triggered when "isShow" is set to true
    },
    onHide: (e) => {
      // Triggered when "isShow" is set to false
    },
  });

  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={show}>Open Modal</button>
      <button onClick={hide}>Close Modal</button>
      <button onClick={toggle}>{isShow ? "Close" : "Open"} Modal</button>
      <Portal>
        <div
          // Now you can use the "isShow" state to handle the CSS animations
          className={`modal${isShow ? " modal-open" : ""}`}
          tabIndex={-1}
        >
          <div
            className="modal-dialog"
            role="dialog"
            aria-labelledby="modal-label"
            aria-modal="true"
          >
            <div className="modal-header">
              <h5 id="modal-label" className="modal-title">
                Modal title
              </h5>
            </div>
            <div className="modal-body">
              <p>Modal body text goes here.</p>
            </div>
          </div>
        </div>
      </Portal>
    </div>
  );
};
Besides that, you can also handle the visibility of your component via React animation events or translation events like what I did for the demo app.
Build Your Customized Hook
Are you tired to write the same code over and over again? It's time to build your own hook based on react-cool-portal then use it wherever you want.
import { useCallback } from "react";
import usePortal from "react-cool-portal";

// Customize your hook based on react-cool-portal
const useModal = (options = {}) => {
  const { Portal, isShow, ...rest } = usePortal({
    ...options,
    defaultShow: false,
    internalShowHide: false,
  });

  const Modal = useCallback(
    ({ children }) => (
      <Portal>
        <div className={`modal${isShow ? " modal-open" : ""}`} tabIndex={-1}>
          {children}
        </div>
      </Portal>
    ),
    [isShow]
  );

  return { Modal, isShow, ...rest };
};

// Use it wherever you want
const App = () => {
  const { Modal, show, hide } = useModal();

  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={show}>Open Modal</button>
      <button onClick={hide}>Close Modal</button>
      <Modal>
        <div
          className="modal-dialog"
          role="dialog"
          aria-labelledby="modal-label"
          aria-modal="true"
        >
          <div className="modal-header">
            <h5 id="modal-label" className="modal-title">
              Modal title
            </h5>
          </div>
          <div className="modal-body">
            <p>Modal body text goes here.</p>
          </div>
        </div>
      </Modal>
    </div>
  );
};
Thanks for reading, for more usage details checkout the project's GitHub page: https://github.com/wellyshen/react-cool-portal
You can also install this package is distributed via npm.
$ yarn add react-cool-portal
# or
$ npm install --save react-cool-portal
Stay Tuned!

Written by welly | Code x Design ✨
Published by HackerNoon on 2020/05/10