React dat.GUI

This is a fully* featured React port of Google's esteemed dat.GUI controller library. It comes packed with all the core components you'll need to cleanly integrate dat.GUIs into your React app.

For those that haven't used or seen dat.GUI before, it's basically a GUI for updating and interacting with objects in real time. It's used extensively in canvas or WebGL rendering demos/apps for libraries such as three.js but it can also be used to build browser based editing software.

TOC

• Demo
• Installation
• Usage
• Docs
  • DatGui
    • props
  • Components
    • Common props
    • DatBoolean
    • DatButton
    • DatColor
    • DatFolder
    • DatNumber
    • DatPresets
    • DatSelect
    • DatString
• Scripts
  • build
  • dev
  • dev:migrate
  • dev:promote
  • example
  • example:deploy
  • test
  • test:watch
  • lint
  • lint:fix
  • toc
• What's missing
• Roadmap

Demo

Checkout the demo!

The demo is a deployed version of the latest production build of ./example. There's also a dev directory where you can prototype changes to the source code easily. Both of these have been bootstrapped with create-react-app.

Installation

npm install react-dat-gui --save

Usage

First you'll need a wrapper component which will handle the updates from your dat.GUI, this component should pass the data for the GUI to control as well as an onUpdate function to the DatGui container component as props. Here's how you might do that:

import '../node_modules/react-dat-gui/build/react-dat-gui.css';
import React, { Component } from 'react';

import DatGui, { DatBoolean, DatButton, DatNumber, DatString } from 'react-dat-gui';

class App extends Component {
  state = {
    data: {
      package: 'react-dat-gui',
      power: 9000,
      isAwesome: true,
      feelsLike: '#2FA1D6',
    }
  }

  update = data => this.setState({ data })

  render() {
    const { data } = this.state;

    return (
      <DatGui data={data} onUpdate={this.update}>
        <DatString path='package' label='Package' />
        <DatNumber path='power' label='Power' min={9000} max={9999} step={1} />
        <DatBoolean path='isAwesome' label='Awesome?' />
        <DatColor path='feelsLike' label='Feels Like' />
      </DatGui>
    )
  }

This will give you a dat.GUI controller which can perform live mutations to the data in the App component's state.

Docs

DatGui

This is the main container component for your GUI and is the default export from the package.

props

required

• data - The data your dat.GUI controller will mutate
• onUpdate - The method which will be called whenever an update is handled by the controller
• children - The dat.GUI components that make up the controller

optional

• liveUpdate - Determines if live updates should occur, defaults to true
• labelWidth - The width of the labels in pixels, defaults to 40
• className - The class name to set on the DatGui div
• style - The style object to set on the DatGui div

Components

All of the react-dat-gui components should be rendered as children of your DatGui parent component.

Common props

These components will have a number of props implicitly passed to them via the DatGui parent component's renderChildren method, but can also require other props to be passed explicitly to them.

Below are docs for the required and optional props you can pass to each component. Check the renderChildren method of src/index.js to see which other props are passed down implicitly.

required

• path: string - the path to the value within the data object which the component will control, eg., considering your object was { foo: 'bar' }: <DatString path='foo' />
• Note, this prop is not required for the following components
  • DatButton
  • DatFolder
  • DatPresets

optional

• label: string - the label for the controller eg., <DatString path='message' label='Message' />

DatBoolean

Used for controlling boolean values. Renders a checkbox input element.

DatButton

Can be used for performing any kind of function. Simply pass an onClick prop to the component and it will fire whenever the rendered element is clicked.

props

required

• onClick :func - the function to perform with the rendered element is clicked

DatColor

Uses react-color to render a color picker component that will control color values.

DatFolder

Component which wraps other components to render them within an expandable/collapsable nested folder.

props

required

• title: string - The folder title eg., <DatFolder title='MyAwesomeFolder' />
• children: array - The child components to render

DatNumber

A number component for updating numeric values. Will render a slider if min, max and step props are supplied.

props

optional

• min: number - The minimum range for the number
• max: number - The maximum range for the number
• step: number - The amount the number should increment each tick

DatPresets

Presets for the object which your DatGui is controlling can be supplied to this component as items in its options prop. A select field will be rendered which will allow you to easily switch between the presets.

Each item in this array will need to be in the format { 'presetName': ...data, ...preset } where ...data is your initial data and ...preset is your preset.

props

required

• options: array - An array of objects, each in the format { 'presetName': ...data, ...preset }

DatSelect

A select component for updating a value with one of the options supplied via the options prop. The original value from the path will always be added to the passed options array as the first item.

props

required

• options: array - A simple array of options to select from eg., <DatSelect path='fruits' options={['apple', 'orange', 'pear']} />

DatString

A simple text input component that can be used to mutate strings.

Scripts

There are a few NPM scripts in the root package.json for developing changes to the repo's source code as well as running tests and deploying the demo.

build

Builds the package for publishing.

dev

Runs the app in ./dev.

dev:migrate

Migrates the code in ./src to ./dev/src/react-dat-gui. Handy for making sure you're developing with the latest source code.

dev:promote

Promotes the code in ./dev/src/react-dat-gui back up to the root of the repo. Use this when you're happy with the changes you've been developing.

example

Runs the app in ./example.

example:deploy

Deploys the production build of the app in ./example to the gh-pages branch of this repo.

test

Runs unit tests.

test:watch

Runs unit tests and watches for changes.

lint

Runs eslint on the supplied path.

lint:fix

Runs eslint --fix on the supplied path.

toc

Prints the README.md table of contents into the console.

What's missing

There are still a few features from the original implementation missing from this package. These are mainly related to saving and loading data as well as local storage. Animations for folder expanding/collapsing is also not currently implemented, but shouldn't be too hard to do.

For the first, I think the fact that this is now an NPM module sort of goes against it handling this sort of stuff. Google's original concept was basically a plug and play controller that could do everything if you just slam it into the browser and pass it an object. However, in module form, it's expected that you'll most likely be integrating this with an existing application. In that case, you'll probably have pretty specific needs around how you would like to save/load data into your GUI and so it's been left out for now.

Local storage however is in the roadmap and will probably be done very soon.

Roadmap

• Loading and storing both default and preset data via localStorage
• Time travel with undo/redo buttons (edited)
• Better support for floating point DatNumbers (rounding etc.)