Reusability In React!

What is reusability?

Code that allows itself to be reused for different purposes without having to re-write different code for the same purpose is reusability.

Why reusability at all?

Well, I had the same question when I started learning React. Why do we even need Reusable components when we can straight up write some more code and create another component, right? Well, this goes against many ways. One of them being DRY.

Do not repeat yourself.

One of the key principles of Software Development.

Fun fact: When I Started React, I used to write every other component just like plain html without reusing the code anywhere at all. ( Only until I learned this ).

How can reusability be achieved?

Well there are many ways to achieve reusability. It just depends the type of code that you're writing. In this article I'm gonna show how you can build Reusable Button Component in React which you can reuse anywhere in your React projects.

Step 1:

Start with the idea: To have buttons as components without reusability you'd do something like this in your project:

DownloadButton.js
CancelButton.js
ShareButton.js and ...so on.

I guess you can already sense the problem here. Can't you? Well if you can't, here it is: Multiple files with similar/duplicate code for the same type of component. (Button).

Which means more complex and annoying file structure to maintain as the project grows.

So how can we solve this?

Well, make a component which can give you the result that you want with the data that's given to it. Let's do it.

Create a React project. I've used CRA here:

create-react-app reusable-components

Dependencies: react-icons (npm i react-icons)

Step 2:

Create a component called Button.js or with a name that you prefer.

Place the following code in it:

import React from "react";

export default ({ buttons }) => {
  const generatedButtons = buttons.map((button, index) => {
    const [icon, text, textColor, backgroundColor, buttonRadius, callback] = button;

    const Icon = icon;

    const styles = {
      receivedStyles: {
        color: textColor,
        background: backgroundColor,
        borderRadius: buttonRadius,
      },
      defaultStyles: {
        display: "flex",
        alignItems: "center",
        justifyContent: "center",
        border: "none",
        padding: "0.6em 1.2em",
        margin: "1em",
        fontSize: "0.9em",
      },
    };
    const { receivedStyles, defaultStyles } = styles;
    return (
      <button
        key={index}
        style={
          icon
            ? { ...receivedStyles, ...defaultStyles }
            : { ...receivedStyles, ...defaultStyles, padding: "1em 1.5em" }
        }
        onClick={callback || null}
      >
        {icon && <Icon style={{ margin: "0.3em", fontSize: "1.5em" }} />}
        {text && text}
      </button>
    );
  });

  return (
    <div>
      {generatedButtons}
    </div>
  );
};

The logic in above code is quite simple. We just map a Two Dimensional Array containing individual array data which maps to a different button. And with a bit of conditional rendering, we display them differently based on the data they're given.

How to use?

It's quite simple too.

import Button from "./Button";
import { IoMdDoneAll as DoneIcon } from "react-icons/io";
import {FaCloudDownloadAlt as CloudDownloadIcon, FaShareAlt as ShareIcon,} from "react-icons/fa";
import { MdCancel as CancelIcon } from "react-icons/md";

const styles = {
 height: "100vh",
 width: "100%",
 display: "flex",
 alignItems: "center",
 justifyContent: "center",
 background: "#242424",
};

function App() {
  return (
    <div style={styles}>
        <Button buttons={[
           [DoneIcon, "Done", "#fff", "#570C99", "6px", () => console.log("clicked: Done button")],
           [cloudDownloadIcon, "Download", "#fff","#009DAE", "100px",() => console.log("clicked: Download button") ],
           [CancelIcon, "Cancel", "#fff","#FF0000", "100px",() => console.log("clicked: Cancel button") ],
           [ShareIcon, "Share", "#fff", "#516BEB", null,() => console.log("clicked: Share button") ] ]}
    </div>
  );
}

export default App;