Select provides flexible building blocks for selection interfaces in Halogen. If you need a dropdown menu, typeahead, autocomplete, multi-select, calendar, image picker, or other selection interface, and you want it to be accessible, and you also want complete visual control over the component, then you're in the right place.
- Module Documentation on Pursuit
- Official Documentation / Tutorials / Getting Started
- CitizenNet UI Repository
This library is under active development and changes often. If you need a stable selection library, we're not there yet! Please consider helping out with a pull request to add features you need and help us reach 1.0!
There are a few ways to get started with the Select library.
Installation
Select is available on Bower and Pursuit:
bower i --save purescript-halogen-selectPursuit Package Documentation
The Select library and its module documentation are on Pursuit. However, you are more likely to get value from the documentation site.
Official Docs, Tutorials & Getting Started
To learn more about using Select, see the official documentation site.
Live Code
You can see working examples of components built using this library in a few places:
- See the Components folder from the documentation site, or
- Check out the official CitizenNet UI Repository where we use this library to make our app's design system.
Have an example of a component you've built with Select? Open a PR or drop us a message and we can help review and showcase your work.
The library provides essential behaviors for selection user interfaces as a group of Halogen components. But you won't find a single render function in the code. Instead, with the help of a few getProps helpers, you can write your HTML rendering however you'd like. You can freely include your own queries and the library will return them to be run. You can even use any data you want from your parent state in your render functions. The library manages user interaction, state, accessibility, and logic; you are responsible for rendering HTML depending on that state.
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Provide behaviors, not styles Developers should be able to style and display dropdowns and typeaheads however they would like, rather than be forced to use particular CSS classes or re-implement the component with their HTML. This is accomplished with augmented render functions as described below. We provide the machinery; you provide the HTML and styles.
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Export the building blocks, not just the end result Developers should be able to take a core set of behaviors and choose how they would like to handle them in their own version of the component. If you would like the typeahead's functionality but do something fancy with the selected items, you should be able to. Each building block is exported.
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Require minimal configuration Instantiating a typeahead shouldn't require a 50-field configuration record. We require at minimum two things: the data to populate the menu and the HTML to render that data. The rest is taken care of by the component. You are responsible for handling two things: when an item was selected, and when the user has performed a new search. If you want to do even less, you can use one of our default implementations to drop in to your project.
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Be accessible (Upcoming) ARIA props and other features necessary for accessibility online should be handled properly without any setup.
The primary design decision made in this project vs. other typeaheads is offloading HTML rendering to the user. Rather than render an input field ourselves and provide a CSS class for styling, we allow you to write your own HTML and augment your properties with the behaviors we need for the select to function.
In practice, you are responsible for providing render functions for each HTML element involved in the component. Your render function should be augmented using one of our provided functions, which will extend your CSS & events with our behaviors.
For example, you can make your container compatible with the component with the getContainerProps function, which you would apply to the array of iprops present on your button element:
[ ... your HTML ...
, HH.span
( getContainerProps [ ... your css & events ... ] ) -- Augments your props with our behaviors
[ ... your HTML ... ]
, ... your HTML ...
]Warning: As of 1/12/2017, if your events are duplicated by ours, they will be overwritten and fail to trigger. Support for multiple handlers from the same event is not yet supported.
There are several helper functions you can use to attach the correct props to your selection UI. There are two kinds:
- Helpers meant to be used on your rendering code which will render inside the primitive;
- Helpers meant to be used on special elements outside the primitives, like the
getTogglePropshelper which allows some focusable element on the page to control the container properly.
Please see the documentation site for examples of these.
| primitive | function | description |
|---|---|---|
| Search | getInputProps |
Use on the array of properties for the input field you want to use to capture user input |
| Container | getItemProps |
Attach events to an item in the container to support selection, highlighting, and key events (like Enter to select). |
| Container | getContainerProps |
Attach properties to the HTML element that encloses the container. This makes sure you can select items without blurring the container, unless you want to. |
| Container | getChildProps |
A helper to embed your own HTML and queries inside the container's render function. It will ensure that your events do not inadvertently steal focus or trigger a blur on the container. |
| Container | getToggleProps |
Attach properties to a DOM node that will maintain focus and capture key and click events for the container. If you are using the search primitive, this helper is unnecessary. |
This project drew inspiration from the approach taken by paypal/downshift. Special thanks to Nathan Faubion and Nicholas Scheel for their help.