Proper way to build bootstrap modals and notifications in React JS?

Question

I would like to have modals and notifications in my app and coming from using old jQuery Bootstrap, creating modals and notifications were really easy but now I am pretty confused on how to implement this in the virtual DOM using the react component system.

This is what I believe the standard react way to build modals in React within a component:

Index/Router Component >
    Main Layout Component >
        {...Page Components... }
            {...Child Component}
                {<Modal /> or <Notification />}

The issue with this is I dont want to constantly have to import and create a <Modal> or <Notification /> component within my sub components, instead maybe just call a utility function such as {app.notify({type: 'success', message: 'some message'})} or app.modal({...customconfig}) and have both defined within my Main layout component which get triggerd through any child components.

Any help on this would be great, thanks!

Answer 1

You do not need to keep your Modal component in a hierarchy. Your Modal component should be an independent component which would take appropriate props to decide what needs to be displayed. Eg

<Modal message={"This is my modal"} showOkCancel={true} showYesNo={false} handleOkYes={()=>console.log("OK clicked")} handleCancelNo={()=>console.log("Cancel clicked"} />

In the above example, the Modal accepts a number of props which would help it decide the message to display, the buttons to display and the actions that need to take on said button click.

This kind of a component can reside outside your component hierarchy and can be imported into any component that needs to show a modal. The parent component would just need to pass the appropriate props to show the modal.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

So here is the approach I took to resolve this.

First here is how you want to structure the modal and notification components:

{Index/Router Component}
    {Main Layout Component <Modal /> or <Notification />}
        {...Page Components... }
            {...Child Component calls app.modal({...config}) or app.notify(...config)}

For notifications, I used a plugin called react-notification-system and for modal, I just wrote it myself.

Here is my code:

Layout.js

import React from "react";
import {Link} from 'react-router';
import NotificationSystem from 'react-notification-system';

import AppHeader from "#/ui/header/AppHeader";
import AppFooter from "#/ui/footer/AppFooter";

import Modal from "#/ui/modals/modal/Modal";

import "@/main.scss";
import './layout.scss';


export default class Layout extends React.Component {
    constructor(props) {
        super(props);
    }

    componentDidMount() {
        app.notify.clear = this.refs.notificationSystem.clearNotifications;
        app.notify = this.refs.notificationSystem.addNotification;
        app.modal = this.refs.modal.updateProps;
    }

    render() {
        return (
            <div class="app">
                <div class="header">
                    <AppHeader page={this.props.location.pathname.replace('/', '')}/>
                </div>
                <div class="body">
                    {this.props.children}
                </div>
                <div class="footer">
                    <AppFooter />
                </div>

                <NotificationSystem ref="notificationSystem" style={false} />
                <Modal ref="modal" />
            </div>

        );
    };
}

Modal.js

import React from "react";
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';

import SVGInline from "react-svg-inline";
import {closeSvg} from '#/utils/Svg';

export default class Modal extends React.Component {
    constructor(props) {
        super(props);

        this.state = {
            showHeader: true,
            showFooter: false,
            title: "",
            size: '',
            className: '',
            id: '',
            footerContent: null,
            showSubmitBtn: true,
            showCancelBtn: true,
            cancelBtnText: "Cancel",
            successBtnText: "Save Changes",
            onModalClose: () => {},
            showModal: false,
            html: () => {}
        }

        this.updateProps = this.updateProps.bind(this);
        this.hideModal = this.hideModal.bind(this);
    }

    componentWillMount() {
        var self = this;

        var $modal = $(ReactDOM.findDOMNode(this));
    }

    componentDidUpdate(prevProps, prevState) {
        if(this.state.showModal) {
            $('body').addClass('modal-open');
        } else {
            $('body').removeClass('modal-open');
        }
    }

    componentWillUnmount() {
        // $('body').removeClass("modal-open");
    }

    componentWillReceiveProps(nextProps) {
        console.log(nextProps);
    }

    updateProps(args) {
        let merged = {...this.state, ...args};
        this.setState(merged);
    }

    hideModal() {
        this.setState({
            showModal: false
        });

        this.state.onModalClose();
    }

    buildFooter() {
        if(this.props.footerContent) {
            return (
                <div class="content">
                    {this.props.footerContent}
                </div>
            )
        } else if(this.props.showCancelBtn && this.props.showSubmitBtn) {
            return (
                <div class="buttons">
                    <button type="button" class="btn btn-default" data-dismiss="modal" onClick={this.props.onModalClose}>{this.props.cancelBtnText}</button>
                    <button type="button" class="btn btn-success">{this.props.successBtnText}</button>
                </div>
            );
        } else if(this.props.showCancelBtn) {
            return (<button type="button" class="btn btn-default" data-dismiss="modal" onClick={this.props.onModalClose}>Close</button>);
        } else if(this.props.showSubmitBtn) {
            return (<button type="button" class="btn btn-success">Save changes</button>);
        }
    }

    render() {
        let {
            id,
            className,
            onModalClose,
            size,
            showHeader,
            title,
            children,
            showFooter,
            showModal,
            html
        } = this.state;

        return (
            <div class={`modal-wrapper`} >
                {
                    showModal ?
                        <div class={`modal fade in ${className}`} role="dialog">
                            <div class="bg" ></div>
                            <div class={`modal-dialog ${size}`}>
                                <div class="modal-content">

                                    { showHeader ?
                                        <div class="modal-header">
                                            <button type="button" class="close" data-dismiss="modal">
                                                <SVGInline svg={closeSvg} />
                                            </button>
                                            <h4 class="modal-title">{ title }</h4>
                                        </div> : '' }


                                    <div class="modal-body" >
                                        {html()}
                                    </div>

                                    {  showFooter ?
                                        <div class="modal-footer">
                                            { this.buildFooter() }
                                        </div> : ''
                                    }

                                </div>
                            </div>
                        </div>
                    : ''
                }
            </div>
        );
    }
}

then in any of your child components you can just call within your render function:

app.notify({
    message: message,
    level: 'error'
});

or

app.modal({
    showModal: true,
    className: "fullscreen-image-modal",
    size: "modal-lg",
    html: () => {
        return (<img src={listingManager.LISTINGS_PATH + imgUrl} />);
    }
})