3 minute read

Introduction

As a developer constantly on the lookout for efficient ways to build UI components, I recently explored the combination of the Ruby Gem Lookbook and the ViewComponent gem for a project. Lookbook, with its interactive interface, and ViewComponent, known for its reusable and testable components in Rails, seemed like the perfect pairing. This post dives into my experience using these two technologies together and how they enhanced my development process.

Understanding ViewComponent

ViewComponent is a powerful tool in the Ruby on Rails ecosystem, designed to promote reusable and testable UI components. Unlike traditional Rails views, ViewComponent components are Ruby objects, which encapsulate all the logic needed to render a part of the UI. This encapsulation makes it easier to manage, test, and reuse UI elements across different parts of an application, ultimately leading to more maintainable code.

Discovering Lookbook

Lookbook is a Ruby Gem designed to complement ViewComponent by providing a real-time, interactive interface for viewing and testing components. With Lookbook, you can easily preview components, change parameters like colors, text, and variants, and instantly see how these changes affect the UI. This functionality allows for rapid iteration and experimentation, which is particularly useful during the development phase.

Integrating Lookbook and ViewComponent

Integrating Lookbook with ViewComponent was a straightforward process, thanks to Lookbook’s comprehensive documentation. After setting up Lookbook, I configured it to recognize all my existing ViewComponents. One challenge I encountered was customizing the styles dynamically based on parameters, but Lookbook’s robust parameter management made it easy to adjust and see changes in real time. Setting up previews for different component states and variations was particularly beneficial for showcasing all possible UI scenarios to my team.

Enhancing UI Development with Lookbook

Using Lookbook significantly enhanced my development workflow. Being able to adjust component parameters and instantly see the results meant that I could fine-tune designs faster than ever before. The real-time previews provided immediate feedback, which was invaluable when testing components with various inputs and styles. This level of interactivity not only saved time but also improved the quality of the UI components by allowing for more thorough testing and refinement.

Demonstration

Below are some videos that demonstrate the params you can use to change styles on the fly in while in development. No refreshing is necessary when using these params and style changes take place immediately.

Here I am using the alert view_component that I’ve created. You can see that alert has a few variants that are made within the view component. I utilized lookbooks select menu to inherit these variants so that when I select them you can all the possibilities for the alert. In addition, there is also a input form for modifying text values such as the alerts title in this example.

Lookbook also has a toggle params for easily turning on and off different elements of a component. For example, below, I have a checkbox that has a label and I have built a param to see what it would look like with and without it.

Another param control that I experimented with and you probably saw in the clip above, is the color picker option. I thought this was a pretty nifty feature allowing me to change the color of the background color of the checkbox.

Conclusion

Overall, my experience with Lookbook and ViewComponent has been incredibly positive. The combination of reusable components and an interactive preview environment has made developing UI components more streamlined and efficient. I highly recommend these tools to any Rails developer looking to improve their front-end workflow. Give Lookbook and ViewComponent a try on your next project—you might just find they become an indispensable part of your development toolkit.

Updated:

You May Also Enjoy