FlexLayout

FlexLayout is a layout manager that arranges React components in multiple tab sets, tabs can be resized and moved.

Run the Demo

Try it now using JSFiddle

Screenshot of Caplin Liberator Explorer using FlexLayout

FlexLayout's only dependency is React.

Features:

• splitters
• tabs
• tab dragging and ordering
• tabset dragging (move all the tabs in a tabset in one operation)
• dock to tabset or edge of frame
• maximize tabset (double click tabset header or use icon)
• tab overflow (show menu when tabs overflow, scroll tabs using mouse wheel)
• border tabsets
• popout tabs into new browser windows (only enabled in latest browsers)
• submodels, allow layouts inside layouts
• tab renaming (double click tab text to rename)
• themeing - light, gray and dark
• touch events - works on mobile devices (iPad, Android)
• add tabs using drag, indirect drag, add to active tabset, add to tabset by id
• preferred pixel size tabsets (try to keep their size when window resizes)
• headed tabsets
• tab and tabset attributes: enableHeader, enableTabStrip, enableDock, enableDrop...
• customizable tabs and tabset header rendering
• esc cancels drag
• typescript type declarations included
• supports overriding css class names via the classNameMapper prop, for use in css modules

Installation

FlexLayout is in the npm repository. Simply install React and FlexLayout from npm:

npm install react --save
npm install react-dom --save
npm install flexlayout-react --save

Import React and FlexLayout in your modules:

import React from "react";
import ReactDOM from "react-dom";
import FlexLayout from "flexlayout-react";

Include the light, gray or dark style in your html:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="node_modules/flexlayout-react/style/light.css" />

Usage

The <Layout> component renders the tabsets and splitters, it takes the following props:

The model is tree of Node objects that define the structure of the layout.

The factory is a function that takes a Node object and returns a React component that should be hosted by a tab in the layout.

The model can be created using the Model.fromJson(jsonObject) static method, and can be saved using the model.toJson() method.

this.state = {model: FlexLayout.Model.fromJson(json)};

render() {
	<Layout model={this.state.model} factory={factory}/>
}

Example Configuration:

var json = {
	global: {},
	borders: [],
	layout:{
		"type": "row",
		"weight": 100,
		"children": [
			{
				"type": "tabset",
				"weight": 50,
				"selected": 0,
				"children": [
					{
						"type": "tab",
						"name": "FX",
						"component":"grid",
					}
				]
			},
			{
				"type": "tabset",
				"weight": 50,
				"selected": 0,
				"children": [
					{
						"type": "tab",
						"name": "FI",
						"component":"grid",
					}
				]
			}
		]
	}
};

Example Code

import React from "react";
import ReactDOM from "react-dom";
import FlexLayout from "flexlayout-react";

class Main extends React.Component {

    constructor(props) {
        super(props);
        this.state = {model: FlexLayout.Model.fromJson(json)};
    }

    factory = (node) => {
        var component = node.getComponent();
        if (component === "button") {
            return <button>{node.getName()}</button>;
        }
    }

    render() {
        return (
            <FlexLayout.Layout model={this.state.model} factory={this.factory}/>
        )
    }
}

ReactDOM.render(<Main/>, document.getElementById("container"));

(See the examples for full source code)

The above code would render two tabsets horizontally each containing a single tab that hosts a button component. The tabs could be moved and resized by dragging and dropping. Additional grids could be added to the layout by sending actions to the model.

Try it now using JSFiddle

The model is built up using 4 types of 'node':

• row - rows contains a list of tabsets and child rows, the top level row will render horizontally, child 'rows' will render in the opposite orientation to their parent.

• tabset - tabsets contain a list of tabs and the index of the selected tab

• tab - tabs specify the name of the component that they should host (that will be loaded via the factory) and the text of the actual tab.

• border - borders contain a list of tabs and the index of the selected tab, they can only be used in the borders top level element.

The main layout is defined with rows within rows that contain tabsets that themselves contain tabs.

The model json contains 3 top level elements:

• global - where global options are defined
• layout - where the main row/tabset/tabs layout hierarchy is defined
• borders - (optional) where up to 4 borders are defined ("top", "bottom", "left", "right").

Weights on rows and tabsets specify the relative weight of these nodes within the parent row, the actual values do not matter just their relative values (ie two tabsets of weights 30,70 would render the same if they had weights of 3,7).

example borders section:

	"borders": [
		 {
		    "type":"border",
		 	"location": "left",
			"children": [
				{
					"type": "tab",
					"enableClose":false,
					"name": "Navigation",
					"component": "grid",
				}
			]
		},
		{
		    "type":"border",
		 	"location": "right",
			"children": [
				{
					"type": "tab",
					"enableClose":false,
					"name": "Options",
					"component": "grid",
				}
			]
		},
		{
		    "type":"border",
			"location": "bottom",
			"children": [
				{
					"type": "tab",
					"enableClose":false,
					"name": "Activity Blotter",
					"component": "grid",
				},
				{
					"type": "tab",
					"enableClose":false,
					"name": "Execution Blotter",
					"component": "grid",
				}
			]
		}
	]

To control where nodes can be dropped you can add a callback function to the model:

model.setOnAllowDrop(this.allowDrop);

example:

    allowDrop(dragNode, dropInfo) {
        let dropNode = dropInfo.node;

        // prevent non-border tabs dropping into borders
        if (dropNode.getType() == "border" && (dragNode.getParent() == null || dragNode.getParent().getType() != "border"))
            return false;

        // prevent border tabs dropping into main layout
        if (dropNode.getType() != "border" && (dragNode.getParent() != null && dragNode.getParent().getType() == "border"))
            return false;

        return true;
    }

By changing global or node attributes you can change the layout appearance and functionality, for example:

Setting tabSetEnableTabStrip:false in the global options would change the layout into a multi-splitter (without tabs or drag and drop).

 global: {tabSetEnableTabStrip:false},

Floating Tabs (Popouts)

(Press the 'reload from file' button in the demo app to load new layouts with the popout attribute)

Note: this feature only works for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, latest Edge (the Chrome based one) and Opera, it does NOT work for any version of IE or the previous version of Edge. For unsupported browsers the popout icons will not be shown and any saved layout with popouts will show with all their tabs in the main layout.

For supported browsers tabs can be rendered into external browser windows (for use in multi-monitor setups) by configuring them with the enableFloat attribute. When this attribute is present an additional icon is shown in the tab header bar allowing the tab to be popped out into an external window.

For popouts to work there needs to be an additional html page 'popout.html' hosted at the same location as the main page (copy the one from examples/demo). The popout.html is the host page for the popped out tab, the styles from the main page will be copied into it at runtime.

Because popouts are rendering into a different document to the main layout any code in the popped out tab that uses the global document or window objects will not work correctly (for example custom popup menus), they need to instead use the document/window of the popout. To get the document/window of the popout use the following method on one of the elements rendered in the popout (for example a ref or target in an event handler):

    const currentDocument = this.selfRef.current.ownerDocument;
    const currentWindow = currentDocument.defaultView!;

In the above code selfRef is a React ref to the toplevel element in the tab being rendered.

Note: some libraries already support popout windows by allowing you to specify the document to use, for example see the getDocument() callback in agGrid at https://www.ag-grid.com/javascript-grid-callbacks/

Global Config attributes

Attributes allowed in the 'global' element

Row Attributes

Attributes allowed in nodes of type 'row'.

Tab Attributes

Attributes allowed in nodes of type 'tab'.

Inherited defaults will take their value from the associated global attributes (see above).

Tab nodes have a getExtraData() method that initially returns an empty object, this is the place to add extra data to a tab node that will not be saved.

TabSet Attributes

Attributes allowed in nodes of type 'tabset'.

Inherited defaults will take their value from the associated global attributes (see above).

Note: tabsets can be dynamically created as tabs are moved and deleted when all their tabs are removed (unless enableDeleteWhenEmpty is false).

Border Attributes

Attributes allowed in nodes of type 'border'.

Inherited defaults will take their value from the associated global attributes (see above).

Model Actions

All changes to the model are applied through actions, you can intercept actions resulting from GUI changes before they are applied by implementing the onAction callback property of the Layout. You can also apply actions directly using the Model.doAction() method.

#Example

        model.doAction(Actions.updateModelAttributes({
            splitterSize:40,
            tabSetHeaderHeight:40,
            tabSetTabStripHeight:40
        }));

The above example would increase the size of the splitters, tabset headers and tabs, this could be used to make adjusting the layout easier on a small device.

for example:

model.doAction(Actions.addNode({type:"tab", component:"grid", name:"a grid", id:"5"}, "1", DockLocation.CENTER, 0));

This would add a new grid component to the center of tabset with id "1" and at the 0'th tab position (use value -1 to add to the end of the tabs). Note: you can get the id of a node using the method node.getId(), if an id wasn't assigned when the node was created then one will be created for you of the form # (e.g. #1, #2 ...).

Layout Component Methods to Create New Tabs

Methods on the Layout Component for adding tabs, the tabs are specified by their layout json.

Example:

this.layoutRef.current.addTabToTabSet("NAVIGATION", {type:"tab", component:"grid", name:"a grid"});

This would add a new grid component to the tabset with id "NAVIGATION" (where this.layoutRef is a ref to the Layout element, see https://reactjs.org/docs/refs-and-the-dom.html ).

Tab Node Events

You can handle events on nodes by adding a listener, this would typically be done in the components constructor() method.

Example:

    constructor(props) {
        super(props);
        let config = this.props.node.getConfig();

        // save state in flexlayout node tree
        this.props.node.setEventListener("save", (p) => {
             config.subject = this.subject;
        };
    }

Building the Project

To compile the project just run webpack in the top level directory, this will compile and bundle flexlayout and the examples into the bundles dir. Once compiled the examples can be run by opening their index.html files.

To build the npm distribution run 'npm run build', this will create the artifacts in the dist dir.