Rendering Plasmic components

Once you have fetched the designs from Plasmic, you are ready to render it in your React application using <PlasmicRootProvider /> and <PlasmicComponent />.

<PlasmicRootProvider />

This component should sit near the root of your application. It provides information to the <PlasmicComponent /> components you have throughout your app.

It takes these props:

<PlasmicComponent />

This component renders a specific component designed in Plasmic. If the data is available (either already fetched or is provided as prefetchedData for <PlasmicRootProvider/>), then it is rendered immediately; otherwise, it renders null while it fetches data.

Customizing your component with componentProps

When you render a component using <PlasmicComponent />, you can use the componentProps prop to control which variants to activate, which slots to fill with what content, and which elements to instrument with real data or event handlers.

There are four classes of props that you can pass to componentProps, described in the next sections.

Variant props

Component variants are either simple standalone “toggle” variants, or they are organized into groups. For example, in a Button component, we may have a variant group role that includes primary and secondary variants, or a size group that includes small and large variants. Often the groups are single-choice — you only allow one variant per group to be active. But sometimes it makes sense for them to be multi-choice — for example, a Button component may have a variant group withIcons that has options prefix and suffix, both of which can be true at the same time.

Each toggle variant and each variant group is a prop.

• For toggle variants, you can pass in true if you want it activated.
• For single-choice variant groups, you can pass in the name of the variant you want to activate, or undefined if none should be activated.
• For multi-choice variant groups, you can pass in an array of variant names, or a object of variant names mapping to true or false.

Example:

// Passing in booleans to turn on `isLoading` variant.
<PlasmicComponent
  component="Button"
  componentProps={{
    isLoading: true
  }}
/>

// Passing in literals to turn on `role` and `withIcons` variants
<PlasmicComponent
  component="Button"
  componentProps={{
    role: "primary",
    withIcons: ["prefix", "suffix"]
  }}
/>

// Turning on variants conditionally
<PlasmicComponent
  component="Button"
  componentProps={{
    role: (
      isPrimary() ? 'primary' :
      isSecondary() ? 'secondary' :
      undefined
    ),
    withIcons:{
      prefix: hasPrefixIcon(),
      suffix: hasSuffixIcon()
    }
  }}
/>

The variants prop

You can also combine all the variants you want to activate into a single variants key:

<PlasmicComponent
  component="Button"
  componentProps={{
    variants: {
      role: isPrimary() ? 'primary' : isSecondary() ? 'secondary' : undefined,
      withIcons: {
        prefix: hasPrefixIcon(),
        suffix: hasSuffixIcon()
      }
    }
  }}
/>

Slot Props

You can also specify content for slots defined for the component. For example, a Button component might have slots that correspond to the button text (children), the prefix icon, and the suffix icon:

<PlasmicComponent
  component="Button"
  componentProps={{
    prefixIcon: <TrashIcon />,
    children: 'Hello!'
  }}
/>

You can also combine all the slot content you want to use into a single args key:

<PlasmicComponent
  component="Button"
  componentProps={{
    args: {
      prefixIcon: ...,
      suffixIcon: ...,
      children: "Hello!"
    }
  }}
/>

Override props

The component as designed in Plasmic creates a tree of elements that corresponds to the tree of layers you see in Plasmic. The override props allow you to customize this tree of elements exactly as you see fit to make your component come alive. You can modify the props used for each element, attach event handlers, override rendered content, wrap elements in other React components, and more. We want you to have total control in making the element tree exactly what you want.

You reference the element you want to override by its name; so if you want to override an element, you must first name that element in Plasmic.

For example, for the Button component, you might want to override its root element to attach click handlers:

<PlasmicComponent
  component="Button"
  componentProps={{
    root: {
      props: {
        onClick: () => alert('I got clicked!')
      }
    }
  }}
/>

Or maybe you want to render the Button as a link instead:

<PlasmicComponent
  component="Button"
  componentProps={{
    root: {
      as: 'a',
      props: {
        href: 'https://plasmic.app'
      }
    }
  }}
/>

The object you pass into the named node (“root”) above is the “Override object”. The Override object supports the following properties; you can mix and match them as needed:

props

Object of props to use for that element. Note that the element may be a normal HTML tag — in which case you can pass in HTML attributes — or a component — in which case you can pass in component props. For example,

{
  props: {
    title: user.name,
    onClick: () => ...,
    // etc.
  }
}

as

The React.ElementType to use to render this element. This can be an HTML tag like “a” for links, or a React component. This element will then be rendered with that element type. For example,

{
  as: "a",
  props: {
    href: ...
  }
}

render

A function that takes in the props and the component type that would be rendered, and returns a ReactNode. Doing this will completely replace this element with whatever is returned from the render function.

For example, this is a no-op (will behave as if no render function was specified):

{
  render: (props, Component) => <Component {...props} />;
}

You can adjust the rendering in various ways:

{
  render: (props, Component) => (
    <Wrapper>
      <Component className={props.className} value={value} onChange={handleChange} />
    </Wrapper>
  );
}

You can swap in completely different content for this element:

{
  render: (props, Component) => <TotallyDifferentComponent />;
}

You can also return null if you don’t want to render this element at all:

{
  render: (props, Component) => null;
}

If you pass in a render function, then props and as are ignored.

wrap

A function that takes in the rendered ReactNode for this element, and returns another ReactNode. This is useful if you just want to wrap this element in something, like a context provider. For example,

{
  wrap: node => <Context.Provider value={…}>{node}</Context.Provider>
}

wrapChildren

A function that takes in the rendered children for this element, and returns another ReactNode. This is useful if you want to append or prepend some custom content as a child of this element. For example, to implement an accessible “checkbox”, you may want to sneak in a visually hidden input element that’s not actually in the design:

{
  // insert a visually hidden checkbox input as the first child
  wrapChildren: (children) => (
    <>
      <input className="visually-hidden" type="checkbox" />
      {children}
    </>
  );
}

If you are planning to iterate over children, note that Plasmic-generated code will sometimes wrap elements in React.Fragments. Therefore, instead of using React.Children.map(), you should consider using something like react-keyed-flatten-children, which will flatten fragments for you.

Override object shorthands

Instead of passing in a full Override object as specified above, you can instead use one of these shorthands:

• An object of prop overrides — if you pass in an object without any of the known keys above (props, as, render, wrap, and wrapChildren), we interpret that object as just a props override, equivalent to passing in {props: …}.
• A ReactNode — we interpret this as the children override, equivalent to {props: {children: …}}.
• A function — we interpret this as the render override, equivalent to {render: …}.

Root override props

Any additional props you pass into componentProps are interpreted as an override for the root element. For example, instead of using the root prop as we did before, we can directly set the overrides like this:

<PlasmicComponent
  component="Button"
  // This is interpreted as a prop override for the `root` element
  componentProps={{ onClick: () => alert('I got clicked!') }}
/>

Exploring the componentProps you can use

You can explore exactly what componentProps you can use for each component in Plasmic’s API explorer. You can get there by going to your project in Plasmic, clicking on the “Code” button in the upper-right, and selecting “Loader” as the integration scheme.

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