Babel Plugin: Annotate React

This is a Babel plugin that annotates React components with stable attributes that can be used to search and select using FullStory. 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>

React Native

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

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

See Getting Started with FullStory React Native Capture for more info.

setFSTagName setting

When using this library with FullStory for Mobile Apps, we recommend setting setFSTagName: true to generate better privacy selectors. This setting will automatically set fsTagName with the value of dataElement or dataComponent, which will truncate the privacy selector and avoid duplicate naming.

Example:

• Before RCTSafeAreaView[data-source-file="App.tsx"][data-element="SafeAreaView"][data-component="App"]
• After App[data-source-file="App.tsx"]

plugins: [
  '@fullstory/react-native',
  ["@fullstory/annotate-react", {
    native: true,
    setFSTagName: true,
  }]
]

⚠️ Important: Existing FullStory privacy selectors and defined elements may need to be updated if the app was previously published without setFSTagName: true.

Fragments

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

Ignoring Components

If you would like the plugin to skip the annotation for certain components, use the ignoreComponents option:

  plugins: [
      [
        "@fullstory/annotate-react",
        {
          ignoreComponents:[
            // each item must be a string array containing three items: file name, component name, element name
            // corresponding to the values for data-source-file, data-component, data-element
            // use wild card (*) to match anything
            ["myBoxComponent.jsx","MyBox","Box"],
            ["App.jsx", "*", "ThemeProvider"], // use wild-card to match anything
            ["App.jsx", "App", "*"],
          ]
        }
      ],
  ]

Sample Apps

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.

Getting Help

Please refer to our Knowledge Base article or contact [email protected] for additional help.

React Native

Please see our Getting Started with FullStory React Native Capture guide or email [email protected] for additional help.