react-textarea-autocomplete 📝

Enhanced textarea to achieve autocomplete functionality.

This package provides React Component to achieve GitHub's like functionality in comments regarding the textarea autocomplete. It can be used for example for emoji autocomplete or for @mentions. The render function (for displaying text enhanced by this textarea) is beyond the scope of this package and it should be solved separately.

Installation

This module is distributed via npm and should be installed as one of your project's dependencies:

yarn add @webscopeio/react-textarea-autocomplete

or there is UMD build available. Check out this pen as example.

This package also depends on react and prop-types. Please make sure you have those installed as well.

Props

Note: Every other props than the mentioned below will be propagated to textarea itself

Props	Type	Description
trigger*	Object: Trigger type	Define triggers and their corresponding behavior
loadingComponent*	React Component	Gets `data` props which is already fetched (and displayed) suggestion
minChar	Number	Number of characters that user should type for trigger a suggestion. Defaults to 1.
onCaretPositionChange	Function: (number) => void	Listener called every time the textarea's caret position is changed. The listener is called with one attribute - caret position denoted by an integer number.
closeOnClickOutside	boolean	When it's true autocomplete will close when use click outside. Defaults to false.
movePopupAsYouType	boolean	When it's true the textarea will move along with a caret as a user continues to type. Defaults to false.
style	Style Object	Style's of textarea
listStyle	Style Object	Styles of list's wrapper
itemStyle	Style Object	Styles of item's wrapper
loaderStyle	Style Object	Styles of loader's wrapper
containerStyle	Style Object	Styles of textarea's container
dropdownStyle	Style Object	Styles of dropdown's wrapper
className	string	ClassNames of the textarea
containerClassName	string	ClassNames of the textarea's container
listClassName	string	ClassNames of list's wrapper
itemClassName	string	ClassNames of item's wrapper
loaderClassName	string	ClassNames of loader's wrapper
dropdownClassName	string	ClassNames of dropdown's wrapper

*are mandatory

Methods

The methods below can be called on the React component's ref (see: React Docs)

Methods	Description
getCaretPosition() : number	Gets the current caret position in the textarea
setCaretPosition(position : number) : void	Sets the caret position to the integer value passed as the argument
getSelectionPosition(): {selectionStart: number, selectionEnd: number}	Returns selectionStart and selectionEnd of the textarea
getSelectedText(): ?string	Returns currently selected word

Example:

import React, { Component } from "react";
import ReactTextareaAutocomplete from "@webscopeio/react-textarea-autocomplete";

class App extends Component {
  onCaretPositionChange = (position) => {
    console.log(`Caret position is equal to ${position}`);
  }

  resetCaretPosition = () => {
    this.textarea.setCaretPosition(0);
  }

  printCurrentCaretPosition = () => {
    const caretPosition = this.textarea.getCaretPosition();
    console.log(`Caret position is equal to ${caretPosition}`);
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <div className="app">
        <div className="controls">
            <button onClick={this.resetCaretPosition}>Reset caret position</button>
            <button onClick={this.printCurrentCaretPosition}>Print current caret position to the console</button>
        </div>
        <ReactTextareaAutocomplete
          className="my-textarea"
          loadingComponent={() => <span>Loading</span>}
          trigger={{ ... }}
          ref={(textarea) => { this.textarea = textarea; } }
          onCaretPositionChange={this.onCaretPositionChange}
        />
      </div>
    );
  }
}

export default App;

Trigger type

{
    [triggerChar: string]: {|
      output?: (
        item: Object | string,
        trigger?: string
      ) =>
        | {|
            key?: ?string,
            text: string,
            caretPosition: "start" | "end" | "next" | number
          |}
        | string,
      dataProvider: (
        token: string
      ) => Promise<Array<Object | string>> | Array<Object | string>,
      allowWhitespace?: boolean,
      afterWhitespace?: boolean,
      component: ReactClass<*>
    |},
}

dataProvider is called after each keystroke to get data what the suggestion list should display (array or promise resolving array)
component is the component for render the item in suggestion list. It has selected and entity props provided by React Textarea Autocomplete
allowWhitespace (Optional; defaults to false) Set this to true if you want to provide autocomplete for words (tokens) containing whitespace
afterWhitespace (Optional; defaults to false) Show autocomplete only if it's preceded by whitespace. Cannot be combined with allowWhitespace
output (Optional for string based item. If the item is an object this method is required) This function defines text which will be placed into textarea after the user makes a selection.

You can also specify the behavior of caret if you return object {text: "item", caretPosition: "start"} the caret will be before the word once the user confirms his selection. Other possible value are "next", "end" and number, which is absolute number in contex of textarea (0 is equal position before the first char). Defaults to "next" which is space after the injected word.

Default behavior for string based item is string: <TRIGGER><ITEM><TRIGGER>). This method should always return a unique string, otherwise you have to use object notation and specify your own key.

Example of usage

create-react-app example && cd example && yarn add @jukben/emoji-search @webscopeio/react-textarea-autocomplete

There is also UMD build available, check this CodePen for a proof.💪

App.js

import React, { Component } from "react";
import ReactTextareaAutocomplete from "@webscopeio/react-textarea-autocomplete";
import emoji from "@jukben/emoji-search";

import logo from "./logo.svg";
import "./App.css";
import "@webscopeio/react-textarea-autocomplete/style.css";

const Item = ({ entity: { name, char } }) => <div>{`${name}: ${char}`}</div>;
const Loading = ({ data }) => <div>Loading</div>;

class App extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <div className="App">
        <div className="App-header">
          <img src={logo} className="App-logo" alt="logo" />
          <h2>Welcome to React</h2>
        </div>

        <ReactTextareaAutocomplete
          className="my-textarea"
          loadingComponent={Loading}
          style={{
            fontSize: "18px",
            lineHeight: "20px",
            padding: 5
          }}
          containerStyle={{
            marginTop: 20,
            width: 400,
            height: 100,
            margin: "20px auto"
          }}
          minChar={0}
          trigger={{
            ":": {
              dataProvider: token => {
                return emoji(token)
                  .slice(0, 10)
                  .map(({ name, char }) => ({ name, char }));
              },
              component: Item,
              output: (item, trigger) => item.char
            }
          }}
        />
      </div>
    );
  }
}

export default App;

Development

Run yarn to fetch dependencies.

Run yarn lint check ESlint check (yarn lint:fix for quick fix)

Run yarn flow for flow check

Run yarn test to run unit-tests powered by Jest

Dev playground (recommended)

Run yarn dev and open http://localhost:8080 for the playground

Run yarn cypress:open for open Cypress for E2E testing

Build and link

Run yarn build and yarn link then in your project folder (you have to use the same version of React e.g 15.6.1) yarn link react-textarea-autocomplete to link together.

Your PR's are welcomed! ❤️