Building Rich Text Editors in React: A Comprehensive Guide
The Power of Rich Text Editors
When building web applications, frontend developers often rely on plaintext inputs or textarea elements to capture small text segments, such as usernames or addresses. However, when it comes to content generation, plaintext inputs fall short. That’s where rich text editors come in – offering a live preview of styled and formatted text, enabling users to control the appearance of their content.
Introducing Draft.js and react-draft-wysiwyg
Draft.js is a rich text editor framework for React that provides APIs for building custom rich text editor implementations. It offers a declarative API that supports features ranging from simple text formatting to embedding media items. react-draft-wysiwyg, on the other hand, is a WYSIWYG editor built using React and Draft.js libraries. It comes with many customizable built-in features, including text styling buttons, keyboard shortcuts support, and emoji support.
Benefits of react-draft-wysiwyg
react-draft-wysiwyg offers a fully-featured package with all the general WYSIWYG features and several advanced features, including mentions and hashtags support. It’s highly customizable, allowing developers to tailor the toolbar and features to their needs. Plus, its simple API and well-written documentation make it easy to set up and integrate into your React app.
Getting Started with Draft.js and react-draft-wysiwyg
To get started, create a new React project using Create React App and install the required dependencies, including Draft.js and react-draft-wysiwyg. Then, set up the editor by importing the editor component and styles from react-draft-wysiwyg and EditorState from draft-js.
Working with the EditorState
The EditorState provides a snapshot of the editor’s state, including the undo/redo history, contents, and cursor. You can use EditorState to create a controlled or uncontrolled editor, depending on your needs. For a controlled editor, pass the editorState and onEditorStateChange props to the editor component.
Using Data Conversion Functions
When working with rich text editors, you’ll need to convert the ContentState to raw JavaScript and vice versa – or ContentState to HTML and vice versa. Draft.js provides three functions to enable this: ContentFromRaw, ContentToRaw, and ContentFromHTML. For our use case, we’ll use the draft-convert package to convert the editor state to HTML for storage and display.
Creating a Preview for the Converted EditorState
To create a preview for the converted EditorState, use the useEffect Hook to update the convertedContent state value. Then, display the sanitized HTML in a div using dangerouslySetInnerHTML.
Customizing the Rich Text Editor Component
react-draft-wysiwyg offers a range of customization options, including props to customize the toolbar, behavior, and enable additional features. You can create a minimal toolbar, enable hashtags and mentions support, and more.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve explored the world of rich text editors in React, building a fully-fledged editor with Draft.js and react-draft-wysiwyg. With its flexibility, customizability, and ease of integration, react-draft-wysiwyg is an ideal choice for building rich text editors in React. Whether you’re building a blog, a CMS, or a custom web application, rich text editors can elevate the user experience and take your project to the next level.