React ProseMirror

A fully featured library for safely integrating ProseMirror and React.

Installation

npm install @nytimes/react-prosemirror

yarn:

yarn add @nytimes/react-prosemirror

The Problem

React is a framework for developing reactive user interfaces. To make updates efficient, React separates updates into phases so that it can process updates in batches. In the first phase, application code renders a virtual document. In the second phase, the React DOM renderer finalizes the update by reconciling the real document with the virtual document. The ProseMirror View library renders ProseMirror documents in a single-phase update. Unlike React, it also allows built-in editing features of the browser to modify the document under some circumstances, deriving state updates from view updates rather than the other way around.

It is possible to use both React DOM and ProseMirror View, but using React DOM to render ProseMirror View components safely requires careful consideration of differences between the rendering approaches taken by each framework. The first phase of a React update should be free of side effects, which requires that updates to the ProseMirror View happen in the second phase. This means that during the first phase, React components actually have access to a different (newer) version of the EditorState than the one in the Editorview. As a result code that dispatches transactions may dispatch transactions based on incorrect state. Code that invokes methods of the ProseMirror view may make bad assumptions about its state that cause incorrect behavior or errors.

The Solution

There are two different directions to integrate ProseMirror and React: you can render a ProseMirror EditorView inside of a React component, and you can use React components to render ProseMirror NodeViews. This library provides tools for accomplishing both of these goals.

Rendering ProseMirror Views within React

This library provides a set of React contexts and hooks for consuming them that ensure safe access to the EditorView from React components. This allows us to build React applications that contain ProseMirror Views, even when the EditorState is lifted into React state, or a global state management system like Redux.

The simplest way to make use of these contexts is with the <ProseMirror/> component. The <ProseMirror/> component can be used controlled or uncontrolled, and takes a "mount" prop, used to specify which DOM node the ProseMirror EditorView should be mounted on.

import { EditorState } from "prosemirror-state";
import { ProseMiror } from "@nytimes/react-prosemirror";

export function ProseMirrorEditor() {
  // It's important that mount is stored as state,
  // rather than a ref, so that the ProseMirror component
  // is re-rendered when it's set
  const [mount, setMount] = useState();

  return (
    <ProseMirror mount={mount} state={EditorState.create({ schema })}>
      <div ref={setMount} />
    </ProseMirror>
  );
}

The EditorState can also easily be lifted out of the ProseMirror component and passed as a prop.

import { EditorState } from "prosemirror-state";
import { schema } from "prosemirror-schema-basic";
import { ProseMirror } from "@nytimes/react-prosemirror";

export function ProseMirrorEditor() {
  const [mount, setMount] = useState();
  const [editorState, setEditorState] = useState(
    EditorState.create({ schema })
  );

  return (
    <ProseMirror
      mount={mount}
      state={editorState}
      dispatchTransaction={(tr) => {
        setEditorState((s) => s.apply(tr));
      }}
    >
      <div ref={setMount} />
    </ProseMirror>
  );
}

The ProseMirror component will take care to ensure that the EditorView is always updated with the latest EditorState after each render cycle. Because synchronizing the EditorView is a side effect, it must happen in the effects phase of the React render lifecycle, after all of the ProseMirror component's children have run their render functions. This means that special care must be taken to access the EditorView from within other React components. In order to abstract away this complexity, React ProseMirror provides two hooks: useEditorEffect and useEditorEvent. Both of these hooks can be used from any children of the ProseMirror component.

useEditorEffect

Often, it's necessary to position React components relative to specific positions in the ProseMirror document. For example, you might have some widget that needs to be positioned at the user's cursor. In order to ensure that this positioning happens when the EditorView is in sync with the latest EditorState, we can use useEditorEffect.

// SelectionWidget.tsx
import { useEditorEffect } from "@nytimes/react-prosemirror";

export function SelectionWidget() {
  const [selectionCoords, setSelectionCoords] = useState()

  useEditorEffect((view) => {
    setSelectionCoords(view.coordsAtPos(view.state.selection.anchor))
  })

  return (
    <div
      style={{
        position: "absolute";
        left: selectionCoords.left;
        top: selectionCoords.top;
      }}
    />
  )
}

// ProseMirrorEditor.tsx
import { EditorState } from "prosemirror-state";
import { schema } from "prosemirror-schema-basic";

import { SelectionWidget } from "./SelectionWidget.tsx";

export function ProseMirrorEditor() {
  const [mount, setMount] = useState()
  const [editorState, setEditorState] = useState(EditorState.create({ schema }))

  return (
    <ProseMirror
      mount={mount}
      state={editorState}
      dispatchTransaction={(tr) => {
        setEditorState(s => s.apply(tr))
      }}
    >
      {/*
        We have to mount all components that need to access the
        EditorView as children of the ProseMirror component
      */}
      <SelectionWidget />
      <div ref={setMount} />
    </ProseMirror>
  )
}

useEditorEvent

It's also often necessary to dispatch transactions or execute side effects in response to user actions, like mouse clicks and keyboard events. Note: if you need to respond to keyboard events from within the contenteditable element, you most likely need to use a ProseMirror plugin with an event handler.

However, if you need to dispatch a transaction in response to some event dispatched from a React component, like a tooltip or a toolbar button, you can use useEditorEvent to create a stable function reference that can safely access the latest value of the EditorView.

// BoldButton.tsx
import { toggleMark } from "prosemirror-commands";
import { useEditorEvent } from "@nytimes/react-prosemirror";

export function BoldButton() {
  const onClick = useEditorEvent((view) => {
    const toggleBoldMark = toggleMark(view.state.schema.marks.bold);
    toggleBoldMark(view.state, view.dispatch, view);
  });

  return <button onClick={onClick}>Bold</button>;
}

// ProseMirrorEditor.tsx
import { EditorState } from "prosemirror-state";
import { schema } from "prosemirror-schema-basic";

import { BoldButton } from "./BoldButton.tsx";

export function ProseMirrorEditor() {
  const [mount, setMount] = useState();
  const [editorState, setEditorState] = useState(
    EditorState.create({ schema })
  );

  return (
    <ProseMirror
      mount={mount}
      state={editorState}
      dispatchTransaction={(tr) => {
        setEditorState((s) => s.apply(tr));
      }}
    >
      {/*
        We have to mount all components that need to access the
        EditorView as children of the ProseMirror component
      */}
      <BoldButton />
      <div ref={setMount} />
    </ProseMirror>
  );
}

useEditorView, EditorViewContext and LayoutGroup

Under the hood, the ProseMirror component essentially just composes three separate tools: useEditorView, EditorViewContext, and LayoutGroup. If you find yourself in need of more control over these, they can also be used independently.

useEditorView is a relatively simple hook that takes a mount point and EditorProps as arguments and returns an EditorView instance.

EditorViewContext is a simple React context, which should be provided the current EditorView and EditorState.

LayoutGroup must be rendered as a parent of the component using useEditorView.

Building NodeViews with React

The other way to integrate React and ProseMirror is to have ProseMirror render NodeViews using React components. This is somewhat more complex than the previous section. This library provides a useNodeViews hook, a factory for augmenting NodeView constructors with React components.

useNodeViews takes a map from node name to an extended NodeView constructor. The NodeView constructor must return at least a dom attribute and a component attribute, but can also return any other NodeView attributes, aside from the update method. Here's an example of its usage:

import {
  useNodeViews,
  useEditorEvent,
  NodeViewComponentProps,
} from "@nytimes/react-prosemirror";
import { EditorState } from "prosemirror-state";
import { schema } from "prosemirror-schema-basic";

// Paragraph is more or less a normal React component, taking and rendering
// its children. The actual children will be constructed by ProseMirror and
// passed in here. Take a look at the NodeViewComponentProps type to
// see what other props will be passed to NodeView components.
function Paragraph({ children }: NodeViewComponentProps) {
  const onClick = useEditorEvent((view) => view.dispatch(whatever));
  return <p onClick={onClick}>{children}</p>;
}

// Make sure that your ReactNodeViews are defined outside of
// your component, or are properly memoized. ProseMirror will
// teardown and rebuild all NodeViews if the nodeView prop is
// updated, leading to unbounded recursion if this object doesn't
// have a stable reference.
const reactNodeViews = {
  paragraph: () => ({
    component: Paragraph,
    // We render the Paragraph component itself into a div element
    dom: document.createElement("div"),
    // We render the paragraph node's ProseMirror contents into
    // a span, which will be passed as children to the Paragraph
    // component.
    contentDOM: document.createElement("span"),
  }),
};

function ProseMirrorEditor() {
  const { nodeViews, renderNodeViews } = useNodeViews(reactNodeViews);

  const [mount, setMount] = useState();

  return (
    <ProseMirror
      mount={mount}
      state={EditorState.create({ schema })}
      nodeViews={nodeViews}
    >
      <div ref={setMount} />
      {renderNodeViews()}
    </ProseMirror>
  );
}

ProseMirror

type ProseMirror = (props: {
  dispatchTransaction: (tr: Transaction) => void;
  editorProps: EditorProps;
  editorState: EditorState;
  mount: HTMLElement | null;
  children?: ReactNode | null;
}) => JSX.Element;

Renders the ProseMirror View onto a DOM mount.

The mount prop must be an actual HTMLElement instance. The JSX element representing the mount should be passed as a child to the ProseMirror component.

Example usage:

function MyProseMirrorField() {
  const [mount, setMount] = useState(null);

  return (
    <ProseMirror mount={mount}>
      <div ref={setMount} />
    </ProseMirror>
  );
}

EditorViewContext

type EditorViewContext = React.Context<{
  editorView: EditorView | null;
  editorState: EditorState | null;
}>;

Provides the EditorView, as well as the current EditorState. Should not be consumed directly; instead see useEditorState, useEditorEvent, and useEditorEffect.

See ProseMirrorInner.tsx for example usage. Note that if you are using the ProseMirror component, you don't need to use this context directly.

LayoutGroup

type LayoutGroup = (props: { children: React.ReactNode }) => JSX.Element;

Provides a deferral point for grouped layout effects. All effects registered with useLayoutGroupEffect by children of this provider will execute after all effects registered by useLayoutEffect by children of this provider.

See ProseMirror.tsx for example usage. Note that if you are using the ProseMirror component, you don't need to use this context directly.

useLayoutGroupEffect

type useLayoutGroupEffect = (
  effect: React.EffectCallback,
  deps?: React.DependencyList
) => void;

Like useLayoutEffect, but all effect executions are run after the LayoutGroup layout effects phase.

This hook allows child components to enqueue layout effects that won't be safe to run until after a parent component's layout effects have run.

Note that components that use this hook must be descendants of the LayoutGroup component.

useEditorState

type useEditorState = () => EditorState | null;

Provides access to the current EditorState value.

useEditorView

type useEditorView = <T extends HTMLElement = HTMLElement>(
  mount: T | null,
  props: DirectEditorProps
) => EditorView | null;

Creates, mounts, and manages a ProseMirror EditorView.

All state and props updates are executed in a layout effect. To ensure that the EditorState and EditorView are never out of sync, it's important that the EditorView produced by this hook is only accessed through the useEditorEvent and useEditorEffect hooks.

See ProseMirrorInner.tsx for example usage. Note that if you are using the ProseMirror component, you don't need to use this hook directly.

useEditorEvent

type useEditorEvent = <T extends unknown[]>(
  callback: (view: EditorView | null, ...args: T) => void
) => void;

Returns a stable function reference to be used as an event handler callback.

The callback will be called with the EditorView instance as its first argument.

This hook is dependent on both the EditorViewContext.Provider and the LayoutGroup. It can only be used in a component that is mounted as a child of both of these providers.

useEditorEffect

type useEditorEffect = (
  effect: (editorView: EditorView | null) => void | (() => void),
  dependencies?: React.DependencyList
) => void;

Registers a layout effect to run after the EditorView has been updated with the latest EditorState and Decorations.

Effects can take an EditorView instance as an argument. This hook should be used to execute layout effects that depend on the EditorView, such as for positioning DOM nodes based on ProseMirror positions.

Layout effects registered with this hook still fire synchronously after all DOM mutations, but they do so after the EditorView has been updated, even when the EditorView lives in an ancestor component.

Example usage:

import { useEditorEffect } from '@nytimes/react-prosemirror';

export function SelectionWidget() {
  const [selectionCoords, setSelectionCoords] = useState()

  useEditorEffect((view) => {
    setSelectionCoords(view.coordsAtPos(view.state.selection.anchor))
  })

  return (
    <div
      style={{
        position: 'absolute';
        left: selectionCoords.left;
        top: selectionCoords.top;
      }}
    />
  )
}

useNodeViews

/**
 * Extension of ProseMirror's NodeViewConstructor type to include
 * `component`, the React component to used render the NodeView.
 * All properties other than `component` and `dom` are optional.
 *
 * Unlike ProseMirror's NodeViewConstructor, this function will
 * not be passed any arguments. Instead, `node`, `getPos`, and
 * `decorations` will be passed as props to the React component,
 * and `view` should only be accessed via the above React hooks.
 */
type ReactNodeViewConstructor = () => {
  dom: HTMLElement | null;
  component: React.ComponentType<NodeViewComponentProps>;
  contentDOM?: HTMLElement | null;
  selectNode?: () => void;
  deselectNode?: () => void;
  setSelection?:
    | (anchor: number, head: number, root: Document | ShadowRoot) => void;
  stopEvent?: (event: Event) => boolean;
  ignoreMutation?: (mutation: MutationRecord) => boolean;
  destroy?: () => void;
};

type useNodeViews = (nodeViews: Record<string, ReactNodeViewConstructor>) => {
  nodeViews: Record<string, NodeViewConstructor>;
  renderNodeViews: () => ReactElement[];
};

Hook for creating and rendering NodeViewConstructors that are powered by React components.

component can be any React component that takes NodeViewComponentProps. It will be passed as props all of the arguments to the nodeViewConstructor except for editorView. NodeView components that need access directly to the EditorView should use the useEditorEvent and useEditorEffect hooks to ensure safe access.

For contentful Nodes, the NodeView component will also be passed a children prop containing an empty element. ProseMirror will render content nodes into this element. Like in ProseMirror, the existence of a contentDOM attribute determines whether a NodeView is contentful (i.e. the NodeView has editable content that should be managed by ProseMirror).