

Show HN: React UI Builder Demo On-Line - ipselon
http://umyproto.com/react-ui-builder/

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izyda
Do you see this becoming an entire 'Visual Studio' style suite of tools?

It's a fantastic tool. Right now, I'm mostly creating individual components
(or groups of components rather that perform one functionality) and exporting
them to a larger project/app.

Do you think things such a drag and drop functionality will be implemented? Or
is the view that most would prefer not to have this?

~~~
ipselon
Drag & drop is not precise in positioning of the elements on page. So, I
developed this approach which turned out more productive.

Could you describe your development process using the tool ? It would be
helpful for improving the builder for such process as you have.

~~~
izyda
Sure, at the moment, I'm creating a new project and arranging elements on the
page to design one group of components (for instance, the main table panel of
my monitoring app).

I then start with the "deepest" children that I want control over (beyond them
just being Bootstrap components) and begin creating components, each time
including children. I generally put everything into a single group. When I am
finished, I just take that group's folder and add it to my components/ folder
of my project. I then do all the functionality in my text editor (Sublime).

A few caveats to keep in mind:

\- I filed issue #24 on Git which you fixed, thank you - very helpful. I have
react-ui-builder running on an ec2 instance so I can switch to it between
computers and do not have to worry about running the server locally.

\- I am a data scientist/statistician (both in my job role and by training),
however, I build internal applications for all sorts of
visualizations/dashboard monitoring purposes. I do most of my backend
programming in Python (Flask) and have been using React for the front.

I hope this helps. On the flip side, I'd love to hear any tips to improve that
workflow. Currently, I'm using react-ui-builder as a sort of "component
factory" but I'd be open to using it more extensively.

I'm hesitant to suggest component placement features as this might just be
coming from my inexperience building interfaces but a few sticking points I've
ran into:

\- The 'wrap' component button is useful. It would be helpful to have an
equivalent 'get wrapped' button (ie. insert child).

\- The up/down arrows for moving components work well as does the 'move cursor
one parent up'. It would be useful to be able to do this with a component as
well. (ie. make it a child of the following component or make it a sibling of
its immediate parent).

~~~
ipselon
Thank you a lot, I love you defined the builder as component factory, let me
use it as expression or slogan. As for your workflow with builder I think it's
suitable for big legacy projects, and I will think how to make easier to
export group of components as library or whatever can be injected in outside.

Also if you have any projects, which has useful components or just a whole
project which is doing something useful please din't hesitate to upload
projects into our gallery.

Also if you whant to propose some ideas to me, please write to me directly in
any way convenient for you.

