Name: Config Driven UI using ReactJS
Uploaded: 2023-06-06T17:35:00.000Z
Duration: 7 min

Hello, everyone, and welcome to a lightning talk on config-driven UI using ReactJS. In this video, I'll explain what config-driven UI means and how we can do it in ReactJS.But first, a brief intro about me. So hey, guys, I'm Joban. And I've been working at Microsoft for the past two years. And you guys can reach out to me on the below handles. And so without further ado, let's get started.So what is config-driven, right? What it means. Config-driven UI is a technique that allows you to create user interfaces based on a configuration file, such as JSON, or a TypeScript file that defines the layout and content of the UI components. This can be useful for creating dynamic and customizable UIs without hard coding them.For example, let's say you want to create a dashboard that shows different types of data visualizations and summaries. Instead of writing GSX code for each component and arranging them in a fixed layout, you can use a JSON file that specifies the type, size, position, and data source for each component. And then you can create a custom component that reads that JSON file and renders the UI accordingly. So this way you can easily change the UI by modifying the JSON file without even touching the other code. You can also reuse the same component from different pages and all for different scenarios by providing different JSON files.Moving on, now let's understand this a bit in detail. So here we can see a base UI layer on top of which there is a kind of a wizard menu which consists of various tiles number 1, number 2, number 3, etc. And each tile has a bunch of components A, B, C, etc. The V and the H on the left side you can see, it represents whether the layout setting of each component is whether it is a horizontal or a vertical component. We will come to that what it means.Now for the tile 2 we can have a very similar UI as tile 1 with slight change in the component layout. You can see here. Similarly for tile number 3 also has minor differences in the UI. Now the idea here is do not create separate files for each tile as the UI differences are very minor, but to have a single config file for all the tiles and we render the tiles on the go by reading the config. So how can we do this in reactjs. There are many ways to implement to be honest this config driven UI paradigm. But in this talk, I will show you one of the possible approaches using react-hook and custom components. The basic idea is to have two parts. One to define the layout which uses a recursive structure to hold vertically and horizontally stacked elements and another to map leaf nodes to the actual content that needs to be displayed. In this talk, we will cover the actual implementation of a smallest unit of component, for example, a drop-down, it can be a form, it can be a chart.

Let's start with the layout part. On the screen, you can see the layout part consists of three types of components. The first is element, and then vertical and horizontal. Element is the leaf node that represents a single UI component such as a drop-down chart and the form as I already said. Vertical and horizontal are containers on top of those elements, which allows us to stack elements either vertically or horizontally. It provides us that information. These containers can also be nested inside each other to create complex layouts. The type property specifies the type of the component. The config property contains an ID property as well, which uniquely identifies the component. The other properties that help you to draw the component. The children property is an array of child nodes that follow the same format to create nested UIs.

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Config Driven UI using ReactJS

Interfaz de usuario impulsada por configuración utilizando ReactJS

The video on config-driven UI using ReactJS explores how this technique enables developers to build dynamic UIs without hard coding. It involves using a configuration file to dictate the layout and content of UI components, such as dropdowns, forms, and charts. The layout configuration is managed through elements and containers, which can be stacked vertically or horizontally, supporting complex UI designs. A layout-renderer component in ReactJS takes a JSON configuration file, parses it, and renders the UI based on the specified layout. This approach enhances UI flexibility and scalability, allowing for easy updates by simply modifying the configuration file. Config-driven development promotes reusability and adaptability across different scenarios, making it beneficial for developers seeking efficient UI solutions. The talk highlights how this method can streamline UI management and improve design flexibility, offering potential benefits like faster iterations and easier maintenance.

We at Microsoft are rethinking the way we use ReactJS as frontend devs, traditional React UI Design patterns results in redundant code, making code maintainability cumbersome. By making UI Config driven we supercharged React components by making config file a single source of truth, The above approach made it easier to onboard new UI scenarios quickly and with minimal regression in the old UI Flows, resulting in a significant reduction in dev efforts, the best part is all the code was kept in Typescript only no XML or other declarative languages were used.

Joban Singh

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