A React custom renderer for the blessed library

react-blessed

A React custom renderer for the blessed library.

This renderer should currently be considered as experimental, is subject to change and will only work with React's latest version (16.x.x, using Fiber).

Installation

You can install react-blessed through npm:

# Be sure to install react>=16.2.0 & blessed>=0.1.81 before
npm install blessed react

# Then just install `react-blessed`
npm install react-blessed

Demo

For a quick demo of what you could achieve with such a renderer you can clone this repository and check some of the examples:

git clone https://github.com/Yomguithereal/react-blessed
cd react-blessed
npm install

# To see which examples you can run:
npm run demo

# Then choose one to run:
npm run demo animation

Usage

Rendering a basic application

import React, {Component} from 'react';
import blessed from 'blessed';
import {render} from 'react-blessed';

// Rendering a simple centered box
class App extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <box top="center"
           left="center"
           width="50%"
           height="50%"
           border={{type: 'line'}}
           style={{border: {fg: 'blue'}}}>
        Hello World!
      </box>
    );
  }
}

// Creating our screen
const screen = blessed.screen({
  autoPadding: true,
  smartCSR: true,
  title: 'react-blessed hello world'
});

// Adding a way to quit the program
screen.key(['escape', 'q', 'C-c'], function(ch, key) {
  return process.exit(0);
});

// Rendering the React app using our screen
const component = render(<App />, screen);

Nodes & text nodes

Any of the blessed widgets can be rendered through react-blessed by using a lowercased tag title.

Text nodes, on the other hand, will be rendered by applying the setContent method with the given text on the parent node.

Refs

As with React's DOM renderer, react-blessed lets you handle the original blessed nodes, if you ever need them, through refs.

class CustomList extends Component {
  componentDidMount() {

    // Focus on the first box
    this.refs.first.focus();
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <element>
        <box ref="first">
          First box.
        </box>
        <box ref="second">
          Second box.
        </box>
      </element>
    );
  }
}

Events

Any blessed node event can be caught through a on-prefixed listener:

class Completion extends Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);

    this.state = {progress: 0, color: 'blue'};

    const interval = setInterval(() => {
      if (this.state.progress >= 100)
        return clearInterval(interval);

      this.setState({progress: this.state.progress + 1});
    }, 50);
  }

  render() {
    const {progress} = this.state,
          label = `Progress - ${progress}%`;

    // See the `onComplete` prop
    return <progressbar label={label}
                        onComplete={() => this.setState({color: 'green'})}
                        filled={progress}
                        style={{bar: {bg: this.state.color}}} />;
  }
}

Classes

For convenience, react-blessed lets you handle classes looking like what react-native proposes.

Just pass object or an array of objects as the class of your components likewise:

// Let's say we want all our elements to have a fancy blue border
const stylesheet = {
  bordered: {
    border: {
      type: 'line'
    },
    style: {
      border: {
        fg: 'blue'
      }
    }
  }
};

class App extends Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <element>
        <box class={stylesheet.bordered}>
          First box.
        </box>
        <box class={stylesheet.bordered}>
          Second box.
        </box>
      </element>
    );
  }
}

You can of course combine classes (note that the given array of classes will be compacted):

// Let's say we want all our elements to have a fancy blue border
const stylesheet = {
  bordered: {
    border: {
      type: 'line'
    },
    style: {
      border: {
        fg: 'blue'
      }
    }
  },
  magentaBackground: {
    style: {
      bg: 'magenta'
    }
  }
};

class App extends Component {
  render() {

    // If this flag is false, then the class won't apply to the second box
    const backgroundForSecondBox = this.props.backgroundForSecondBox;

    return (
      <element>
        <box class={[stylesheet.bordered, stylesheet.magentaBackground]}>
          First box.
        </box>
        <box class={[
          stylesheet.bordered,
          backgroundForSecondBox && stylesheet.magentaBackground
        ]}>
          Second box.
        </box>
      </element>
    );
  }
}

Using blessed forks

Because blessed is not actively maintained in quite a while, you might want to use one of it's forks. To do that, import createBlessedRenderer function instead:

import React, {Component} from 'react';
import blessed from 'neo-blessed';
import {createBlessedRenderer} from 'react-blessed';

const render = createBlessedRenderer(blessed);

GitHub