Unlock the Power of Custom Context Menus in React
When you right-click on a website, you’re presented with a native context menu that offers various options, such as saving, printing, or creating a QR code. But have you ever wondered how to create a custom context menu in React that enhances the user experience?
What is a Context Menu?
A context menu, also known as a right-click menu, is a graphical user interface (GUI) menu that appears when a user interacts with an application or operating system. It provides a limited set of choices relevant to the current state or context.
Getting Started with Our React Project
To create a custom right-click menu in React, we’ll initialize a new React project using npx create-react-app react-context-menu and set up our project structure. We’ll use styled-components for styling and create four folders: components, data, hooks, and styles.
Disabling the Default Right-Click Context Menu
By default, browsers display their native context menu when you right-click. To disable this behavior, we’ll use the onContextMenu prop in our App.js file. This will prevent the default menu from appearing when we right-click on our custom context menu.
Creating a Custom Right-Click Context Menu
To create a custom context menu, we’ll create a data.js file to store our data and a MenuContext.js component to render our menu items. We’ll then use the onContextMenu prop to prevent the default browser behavior and display our custom menu.
Implementing the Custom Right-Click Menu
Next, we’ll implement our custom right-click menu by mapping over our data array and rendering our menu items. We’ll use the useEffect Hook to register an event listener and clean up the event to avoid memory leaks.
Displaying the Right-Click Context Menu
When we right-click on our menu items, we’ll display the custom context menu at the correct position using the x and y coordinates of the mouse click. We’ll also ensure that the menu disappears when we click anywhere else on the page.
Styling the Context Menu
To style our context menu, we’ll create a ContextMenu div that’s only displayed when the clicked state is true. We’ll pass the x and y coordinates as props to style the menu’s position.
Creating a Custom Context Menu Hook
To create a reusable custom context menu Hook, we’ll create a useContextMenu.js file that declares two states: clicked and points. We’ll then use the useEffect Hook to register an event listener and clean up the event.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve explored the many ways to create a custom context menu in React applications. When creating your own custom context menu, consider mobile interaction and ensure that your menu doesn’t cause bad user experiences.