happy-ferret / react-uid

Render-less container for generating UID for a11y, consistent react key, and any other good reason 🦄

UID

Generate UID for an item, Renderless UID containers, SSR-friendly UID generation in 900 bytes.

Example - https://codesandbox.io/s/kkmwr6vv47

API

• uid(item, [index]) - generates UID for an object(function and so on). Quite usable for React key property. item should be an object, but could be anything. In case it is not an "object", and might have non-unique value - you have to specify second argument - index

 import {uid} from 'react-uid';
 
 // objects
 const data = [{a:1}, {b:2}];
 data.map( item => <li key={uid(item)}>{item}</li>)
 
 // unique strings
 const data = ["a", "b"];
 data.map( item => <li key={uid(item)}>{item}</li>)
 
 // strings
 const data = ["a", "a"];
  data.map( (item, index) => <li key={uid(item, index)}>{item}</li>)

• UID - renderless container for generation Ids

 import {UID} from 'react-uid';

 <UID>
     {id => (
       <Fragment>
         <input id={id} />
         <label htmlFor={id} />
       </Fragment> 
     )}
 </UID>

 // you can apply some "naming conventions" to the keys
  <UID name={ id => `unique-${id}` }>
      {id => (
        <Fragment>
          <input id={id} />
          <label htmlFor={id} />
        </Fragment>
      )}
  </UID>
  
  // UID also provide `uid` as a second argument
  <UID>
       {(id,uid) => (
         data.map( item => <li key={uid(item)}>{item}</li>) 
       )}
  </UID>
  
  // in the case `item` is not an object, but number or string - provide and index
  <UID>
       {(id,uid) => (
         data.map( (item, index) => <li key={uid(item, index)}>{item}</li>) 
       )}
  </UID>

Server-side friendly UID

• UIDReset, UIDConsumer, UIDFork - SSR friendly UID. Could maintain consistency across renders. They are much more complex than UID, and provide functionality you might not need.

The key difference - they are not using global "singlentone" to track used IDs, but read it from Context API, thus works without side effects.

Next example will generate the same code, regardless how many time you will render it

 import {UIDReset, UIDConsumer} from 'react-uid';

 <UIDReset>
     <UIDConsumer>
         {(id,uid) => (
           <Fragment>
             <input id={id} />
             <label htmlFor={id} />
             data.map( item => <li key={uid(item)}>{item}</li>)
           </Fragment> 
         )}
     </SmartUID>
 </UIDReset>

UID is not SSR friendly - use UIDConsumer.

Code splitting

Codesplitting may affect the order or existence of the components, so alter the componentDidMount order, and change the generated ID as result.

In case of SPA, this is not something you should be bothered about, but for SSR this could be fatal.

Next example will generate consistent keys regardless of component mount order. Each call to UIDFork creates a new branch of UIDs untangled from siblings.

import {UIDReset, UIDFork, UIDConsumer} from 'react-uid';

 <UIDReset>
     <UIDFork>
      <AsyncLoadedCompoent>
         <UIDConsumer>
           { uid => <span>{uid} is unique </span>}
         </UIDConsumer>
     </UIDFork>
     <UIDFork>
       <AsyncLoadedCompoent>
          <UIDConsumer>
            { uid => <span>{uid} is unique </span>}
          </UIDConsumer>
      </UIDFork>    
 </UIDReset>

# Types
Written in TypeScript

# Licence
 MIT