🗺 next-super-layout

Next.js conveniently solves many of the headaches involved with modern React development. However, one of the fundamental pieces still missing from Next.js is the ability to create clean, composable, data-infused layouts. There is some advice to be found in Next.js docs, but no sufficient out-of-the-box abstraction. This problem only worsens when component-level data becomes necessary anywhere in your application; at which point your only option is to "drill props" and deal with increasing amounts of /pages boilerplate. This project tries to solve the layouts problem with a simple, opinionated abstraction that plays nicely with existing Next.js conventions.

📦 Installation

Using NPM:

npm install next-super-layout

Using Yarn:

yarn add next-super-layout

🛠 Usage

Note These instructions are written for >=v3.x. For V2 docs, start here!

Bootstrapping new layouts is a cinch using the createLayout function. Simply give your layout a name and describe some UI with getLayout:

// layouts/my-layout.tsx
import { createLayout } from 'next-super-layout';

export const myLayout = createLayout({
  name: 'myLayout', // choose something unique from amongst all your layouts

  getLayout: (page, data) => {
    // `page` is the React element being wrapped.
    // `data` is the data returned from the `getData` function.
    return (<>
      <MyHeader />
      {page}
      <MyFooter />
    </>);
  },
});

Note If you encounter messages from ESLint about "rules of hooks" violations because "React component names must start with an uppercase letter", you can resolve this by changing getLayout to GetLayout (note the capitalization).

Once we've created our layout, we'll connect it to a Next.js page using createPageWrapper:

// pages/some/path.tsx
import { createPageWrapper } from 'next-super-layout';
import { myLayout } from './layouts/my-layout';

const wrapPage = createPageWrapper(myLayout);

export default wrapPage((props) => {
  return <>{...}</>;
});

Fetching layout data

We can also connect our layout to a static data source wrapping getStaticProps or getServerSideProps. First, we'll create a data fetcher using Layout.createDataFetcher:

// layouts/my-layout.data.tsx
import { myLayout } from './my-layout';

export const myLayoutData = myLayout.createDataFetcher(async (ctx) => {
  // `ctx` is the `GetStaticPropsContext` object passed to `getStaticProps`.
  return { ... };
});

Then, we'll revist our Next.js page to inject our data with createDataWrapper:

  // pages/some/path.tsx
- import { createPageWrapper } from 'next-super-layout';
+ import { createPageWrapper, createDataWrapper } from 'next-super-layout';
  import { myLayout } from './layouts/my-layout';
+ import { myLayoutData} from './layouts/my-layout.data';

  const wrapPage = createPageWrapper(myLayout);
+ const dataWrapper = createDataWrapper(myLayoutData);

  export default wrapPage((props) => {
    return <>{...}</>;
  });

+ export const getStaticProps = dataWrapper.wrapGetStaticProps(...);
  // or...
+ export const getServerSideProps = dataWrapper.wrapGetServerSideProps(...);

Should you need to fetch additional data for your page, you can define a page-specific getStaticProps or getServerSideProps function, then pass it to wrapGetStaticProps or wrapGetServerSideProps, respectively.

Note Shorthands for wrapGetStaticProps and wrapGetServerSideProps are also available: gSP and gSSP, respectively.

(Optional) Connecting next-super-layout to your Next.js _app

To ensure that layout-specific state is persisted between route changes, we can choose to define a custom Next.js _app component onto which we'll connect our layout-wrapped pages. Take a look:

// pages/_app
import { LayoutProvider } from 'next-super-layout';

export default function App(props) {
  return <LayoutProvider {...props} />;
}

Voila!

Composing layouts

With next-super-layout, it's effortless to compose multiple layouts together using variadic parameters given to thecreatePageWrapper and createDataWapper functions:

  // pages/some/path.tsx
  import { createPageWrapper, createDataWrapper } from 'next-super-layout';
  import { myLayout } from './layouts/my-layout';
  import { myLayoutData} from './layouts/my-layout.data';

+ import { myOtherLayout } from './layouts/my-other-layout';
+ import { myOtherLayoutData} from './layouts/my-other-layout.data';

- const wrapPage = createPageWrapper(myLayout);
+ const wrapPage = createPageWrapper(myLayout, myOtherLayout);
- const dataWrapper = createDataWrapper(myLayoutData);
+ const dataWrapper = createDataWrapper(myLayoutData, myOtherLayoutData);

  export default wrapPage((props) => {
    return <>{...}</>;
  });

  export const getStaticProps = dataWrapper.wrapGetStaticProps(...);
  // or...
  export const getServerSideProps = dataWrapper.wrapGetServerSideProps(...);

Using layout data

Layouts contain a useData hook that easily connects any component within the React tree of a page to the data retrieved by that page's getData fetcher.

// components/my-component.tsx
import { myLayout } from './layouts/my-layout';

function MyComponent() {
  const myLayoutData = myLayout.useData();

  // ...

  return <>{...}</>
}

⚖️ License

MIT