Unlock the Power of Modals in Your React App
In today’s digital landscape, modals have become an essential component of website and application design. From social media platforms like Twitter to complex enterprise systems, modals offer a convenient way to interact with users without disrupting the main workflow. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of using modals in your React app and introduce you to nice-modal-react, a powerful utility developed by the eBay team.
The Advantages of Modals
Modals are independent of the active page, allowing users to add, update, delete, or view information without changing the current URL. They’re easy to open and close, and the background information remains fully or partially visible, enhancing the overall user experience.
Introducing nice-modal-react
nice-modal-react is a zero-dependency utility written in TypeScript that uses context to control the state of modals throughout the entire app. Its promise-based modal handling allows you to update the state using promises instead of props, making it easier to interact with the component. You can import modal components throughout the app or use a specific ID to access the component without importing it.
Building a Demo App with nice-modal-react
To demonstrate the capabilities of nice-modal-react, we’ll create a CRUD Notes demo app using Create React App. We’ll set up a new React project, install nice-modal-react, and create individual components for the modal, button, and note.
Initializing the React App
First, we’ll create a new React app using Create React App:
npx create-react-app crud-notes
Next, we’ll set up the project structure, remove unnecessary files, and create a new styles.css file with some basic styling rules.
Setting Up nice-modal-react
Installing nice-modal-react is as simple as running:
npm install @ebay/nice-modal-react
We’ll then set up a separate provider to use React Context to control the state globally.
Creating Components
We’ll create individual components for the modal, button, and note, each with its own JavaScript and CSS files. We’ll use these components to build the CRUD Notes demo app.
Implementing the Logic
Finally, we’ll put everything together and create logic for our app. We’ll use the useState hook to keep track of the notes object, import the necessary components, and create functions to handle the add, edit, and delete button clicks.
Testing the App
Once we’ve completed the implementation, we can test the app by running npm start and navigating to http://localhost:3000 in our browser. We should see a fully functional CRUD Notes demo app.
Conclusion
In this article, we’ve explored the benefits of using modals in your React app and introduced you to nice-modal-react, a powerful utility for managing modals. By following this tutorial, you should now have a working CRUD Notes demo app that demonstrates the capabilities of nice-modal-react. Feel free to contribute to the project and make it even better!