Babel Plugin: Annotate React

This is a Babel plugin that annotates React components with stable attributes that can be used to select using Freshpaint. This is most useful when using a React system that generates dynamic names for Components or rearranges elements.

For React on the web the attributes are data-component, data-element, and data-source-file. For React Native the attributes are dataComponent, dataElement, and dataSourceFile.

The component attribute names the React.Component and the element attribute names the original native elements like View or Image or an emitter of DOM elements like Fragment.

Example input:

class HelloComponent extends Component {
  render() {
    return <div>
      <h1>Hello world</h1>
    </div>;
  }
}

Example JS output:

class HelloComponent extends Component {
  render() {
    return React.createElement("div", {
      "data-component": "HelloComponent",
      "data-file-source": "hello-component.js"
    }, React.createElement("h1", {
      null
    }, "Hello world"));
  }
}

Final render:

<div data-component="HelloComponent" data-file-source="hello-component.js">
  <h1>Hello world</h1>
</div>

To activate React Native support you must pass in a native plugin option like so:

plugins: [
  ["@freshpaint/babel-plugin-annotate-react", { native: true }]
]

By default, the plugin does not annotate React.Fragments because they may or may not contain a child that ends up being an HTML element.

An example with no child element:

const componentName = () => (
  <Fragment>Hello, there.</Fragment>
);

An example with child elements:

const componentName = () => (
  <Fragment>
    Some text
    <h1>Hello, there.</h1> /* This one could be annotated */
    <a href="#foo">Click me</a>
  </Fragment>
);

If you would like the plugin to attempt to annotate the first HTML element created by a Fragment (if it exists) then set the annotate-fragments flag:

plugins: [
  ["@freshpaint/babel-plugin-annotate-react", { "annotate-fragments": true }]
]

We have a few samples to demonstrate this plugin:

• Single Page App
• styled-components
• React native

Much of the logic for adding the attributes originated in the transform-react-qa-classes plugin.