react-archer

🏹 Draw arrows between DOM elements in React 🖋

Installation

npm install react-archer --save or yarn add react-archer

Example

Try it out!

import { ArcherContainer, ArcherElement } from 'react-archer';

const rootStyle = { display: 'flex', justifyContent: 'center' };
const rowStyle = { margin: '200px 0', display: 'flex', justifyContent: 'space-between' };
const boxStyle = { padding: '10px', border: '1px solid black' };

const App = () => {
  return (
    <div style={{ height: '500px', margin: '50px' }}>
      <ArcherContainer strokeColor="red">
        <div style={rootStyle}>
          <ArcherElement
            id="root"
            relations={[
              {
                targetId: 'element2',
                targetAnchor: 'top',
                sourceAnchor: 'bottom',
                style: { strokeDasharray: '5,5' },
              },
            ]}
          >
            <div style={boxStyle}>Root</div>
          </ArcherElement>
        </div>

        <div style={rowStyle}>
          <ArcherElement
            id="element2"
            relations={[
              {
                targetId: 'element3',
                targetAnchor: 'left',
                sourceAnchor: 'right',
                style: { strokeColor: 'blue', strokeWidth: 1 },
                label: <div style={{ marginTop: '-20px' }}>Arrow 2</div>,
              },
            ]}
          >
            <div style={boxStyle}>Element 2</div>
          </ArcherElement>

          <ArcherElement id="element3">
            <div style={boxStyle}>Element 3</div>
          </ArcherElement>

          <ArcherElement
            id="element4"
            relations={[
              {
                targetId: 'root',
                targetAnchor: 'right',
                sourceAnchor: 'left',
                label: 'Arrow 3',
              },
            ]}
          >
            <div style={boxStyle}>Element 4</div>
          </ArcherElement>
        </div>
      </ArcherContainer>
    </div>
  );
};

export default App;

API

ArcherContainer

Props

Name	Type	Description
strokeColor	string	A color string '#ff0000'
strokeWidth	number	A size in px
strokeDasharray	string	Adds dashes to the stroke. It has to be a string representing an array of sizes. See some SVG strokes documentation.
noCurves	boolean	Set this to true if you want angles instead of curves
lineStyle	string	Can be one of angle, curve or straight. Setting this overrides noCurves.
offset	number	Optional number for space between element and start/end of stroke
svgContainerStyle	Style	Style of the SVG container element. Useful if you want to add a z-index to your SVG container to draw the arrows under your elements, for example.
children	React.Node
endShape	Object	An object containing the props to configure the "end shape" of the arrow. Can be one of arrow (default) or circle. See ShapeType for a complete list of available options.
startMarker	boolean	Optional flag (default false) to also add a marker at the start of the arrow.
endMarker	boolean	Optional flag (default true) to remove the marker at the end of the arrow.

Instance methods

If you access to the ref of your ArcherContainer, you will access the refreshScreen method. This will allow you to have more control on when you want to re-draw the arrows.

ArcherElement

Name	Type	Description
id	string	The id that will identify the Archer Element. Should only contain alphanumeric characters and standard characters that you can find in HTML ids.
children	React.Node | (ArcherContext) => React.Node	⚠️ Must be a single element or a function of the internal context. If you are passing a custom component, it should be wrapped in a div or you should forward the reference (see this)
relations	Relation[]

The Relation type has the following shape:

{
  targetId: string,
  targetAnchor: 'top' | 'bottom' | 'left' | 'right' | 'middle',
  sourceAnchor: 'top' | 'bottom' | 'left' | 'right' | 'middle',
  label: React.Node,
  style: ArcherStyle,
}

Please note that the middle anchor does not look very good: the curve won't look nice and the arrow marker will have a little offset. The issue won't be solved before a long time.

The ArcherStyle type has the following shape:

{
  strokeColor: string,
  strokeWidth: number,
  strokeDasharray: number,
  noCurves: boolean,
  lineStyle: string,
  endShape: Object,
  startMarker: boolean,
  endMarker: boolean,
}

Troubleshooting

My arrows don't re-render correctly...

Try using the refreshScreen instance method on your ArcherContainer element. You can access it through the ref of the component.

Call refreshScreen when the event that you need is triggered (onScroll etc.).

TODO

• Automatic anchoring option
• Add a Code Sandbox