parse-community/ParseReact

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Parse + React

Seamlessly bringing Parse data into your React applications.

NOTE: Parse + React only supports the Parse JS SDK up to version 1.6.14. Behavior with 1.7.* is unpredictable, and 1.8.* breaks functionality with the new LiveQueries feature. As developers, we want to encourage patterns that integrate easily into both the server and the client, and are working on a new low-level SDK that works well with Redux and React Native. When that codebase is ready for production apps, we will publish a new recommended starter kit for apps built on Parse & React.

Overview

Parse + React is an interface layer on top of the Parse JS SDK that provides simple access to the Parse API from React. It lets React components subscribe to Parse queries, and allows data mutations to be dispatched in a Flux-style manner. In the background, these subscriptions are managed in a way that lets these components automatically update as objects are created and modified, allowing user interfaces to be snappy and responsive.

Full API

Example

To add Parse data to a component, it simply needs to subscribe to a standard Parse Query. This is done through an implementation of the newly-proposed observe() API for React. The ParseReact Mixin allows a version of this new lifecycle method to be used today with Parse Queries.

If you're using React with ES6 classes, we also provide a subclass of React.Component that allows you to use the observe() and Query-specific APIs.

var CommentBlock = React.createClass({
  mixins: [ParseReact.Mixin], // Enable query subscriptions

  observe: function() {
    // Subscribe to all Comment objects, ordered by creation date
    // The results will be available at this.data.comments
    return {
      comments: (new Parse.Query('Comment')).ascending('createdAt')
    };
  },

  render: function() {
    // Render the text of each comment as a list item
    return (
      <ul>
        {this.data.comments.map(function(c) {
          return <li>{c.text}</li>;
        })}
      </ul>
    );
  }
});

Whenever this component mounts, it will issue the query and the results will be attached to this.data.comments. Each time the query is re-issued, or objects are modified locally that match the query, it will update itself to reflect these changes.

Mutations are dispatched in the manner of Flux Actions, allowing updates to be synchronized between many different components without requiring views to talk to each other. All of the standard Parse data mutations are supported, and you can read more about them in the Data Mutation guide.

// Create a new Comment object with some initial data
ParseReact.Mutation.Create('Comment', {
  text: 'Parse <3 React'
}).dispatch();

Getting Started

Parse + React is available from our CDN (minified), and npm.

If you're not familiar with React, we recommend you first walk through their tutorials before adding Parse data to your React applications.

Parse + React adds new functionality when React and the Parse JS SDK are used together, and it requires that those libraries be in place before it is initialized. The easiest way to do this is to load them on your page before loading the Parse + React library:

<html>
  <head>
    <script src="http://fb.me/react-0.13.3.min.js"></script>
    <script src="https://www.parsecdn.com/js/parse-latest.js"></script>
    <!-- Now include parse-react.js -->
    <script src="https://www.parsecdn.com/js/parse-react.js"></script>

    ...

If you're using a tool like Webpack or Browserify to enable Common JS require statements, you need to make sure you also include the 'parse' npm package in your dependencies.

var React = require('react');
var Parse = require('parse');
var ParseReact = require('parse-react');

// ...

As of version 1.6, the Parse JS SDK has a different build for React Native. If you're using Parse+React on React Native, you'll need to require the 'parse-react/react-native' package instead.

// For React Native apps
var React = require('react-native');
var Parse = require('parse/react-native');
var ParseReact = require('parse-react/react-native');

Now that you've included all of the necessary libraries, you're ready to start subscribing to Parse data and mutating it.

Contributing

See the CONTRIBUTING file for information on how to help out.