Haxe React

A Haxe library offering externs and tool functions leveraging Haxe's excellent type system and compile time macros to offer a strongly typed language to work with the increasingly popular React library.

haxelib install react

API

Most of the regular React API is integrated (non-JSX example):

import api.react.React;
import api.react.ReactDOM;

class App extends ReactComponent {

	static public function main() {
		ReactDOM.render(React.createElement(App), Browser.document.getElementById('app'));
	}

	public function new() {
		super();
	}

	override function render() {
		var cname = 'foo';
		return React.createElement('div', {className:cname}, [/*children*/]);
	}
}

TODO

Externs for common. add-ons and react-router.

Components strict typing

The default ReactComponent type is a shorthand for ReactComponentOf, a fully untyped component.

To fully benefit from Haxe's strict typing you should look into extending a stricter base class:

typedef ReactComponentOfProps = ReactComponentOf;
typedef ReactComponentOfState = ReactComponentOf;
typedef ReactComponentOfRefs = ReactComponentOf;
typedef ReactComponentOfPropsAndState = ReactComponentOf;
typedef ReactComponentOfPropsAndRefs = ReactComponentOf;
typedef ReactComponentOfStateAndRefs = ReactComponentOf;

JSX

The compromise

Unfortunately, the Haxe compiler (and editors) doesn't allow to use exactly the JSX XML DSL, so we had to compromise a bit...

This library's take on JSX is to use a compile-time macro to parse JSX as a string to generate the same kind of code that Facebook's JSX, Babel and Typescript will generate.

Both classic JSX {} binding and Haxe string interpolation $var / ${expression} / <$Comp> are allowed. The advantage of string interpolation is Haxe editor supports for completion and code navigation.

import api.react.React;
import api.react.ReactDOM;
import api.react.ReactMacro.jsx;

class App extends ReactComponent {

	static public function main() {
		ReactDOM.render(jsx(''), Browser.document.getElementById('app'));
	}

	public function new() {
		super();
	}

	override function render() {
		var cname = 'foo';
		return jsx('
			<div>
				${/*children*/}
			</div>
		');
	}
}

Known limitations:

• you can't include double quotes in an expression assigned to an attribute. Eg. <div>
• You can't use functions (and thus factories) for stateless rendering. We're looking into this.