Integrate ActiveUI components

This page shows how to integrate ActiveUI components into a React application. If you are looking to customize ActiveUI, you should go through the tutorial instead.

note

To understand what follows, you must be familiar with React Components and Context.

The list of all ActiveUI components is available here. Integrating these components into a React application presents common challenges. We will consider the Widget component as an example, in order to understand these challenges and learn how to overcome them.

To integrate ActiveUI components, you must first add @activeviam/activeui-sdk as a dependency. To do it, you can open a terminal in the root folder of your project and run:

yarn add @activeviam/activeui-sdk

The Widget component#

Widget is a versatile component: it can be used to display different things. For instance, it can be a pivot table, a line chart or a gauge. In ActiveUI, this component is displayed within dashboards. Let's leverage it to integrate a pivot table into a React application.

The following is a naive attempt at displaying a Widget. It will not work because it omits two mandatory props: queryId and widgetState.

import { Widget } from "@activeviam/activeui-sdk";
const App = () => {  return <Widget />;};

queryId#

queryId allows to share queries and their associated results across your application. Assuming that only one pivot table is displayed, its value does not matter as long as it remains constant.

import { Widget } from "@activeviam/activeui-sdk";
const App = () => {  return <Widget queryId="abc" />;};

widgetState#

widgetState defines what Widget represents. In ActiveUI, this object is saved when a user saves a dashboard. It can take different values, depending on what you wish to display.

note

widgetState must be deserialized before being used. See deserializeWidgetState.

Here is a possible value for widgetState:

import { deserializeWidgetState, Widget } from "@activeviam/activeui-sdk";
const serializedWidgetState = {  widgetKey: "pivot-table",  mapping: {    rows: ["[Countries].[Country].[Country_Name]"],    columns: ["ALL_MEASURES"],    measures: ["[Measures].[contributors.COUNT]"],  },  query: {    mdx: `SELECT      [Countries].[Country].[Country_Name].Members ON ROWS,      [Measures].[contributors.COUNT] ON COLUMNS      FROM [Green-growth]`,  },  serverKey: "my-server",  name: "Count by country",};
const widgetState = deserializeWidgetState(serializedWidgetState);
const App = () => {  return <Widget queryId="abc" widgetState={widgetState} />;};

PluginsProvider#

The code above yields a PluginNotFoundError. This is because it refers to the widgetKey "pivot-table" without providing any widget plugin for this key.

This can be fixed by wrapping Widget in a PluginsProvider and passing the corresponding widget plugin.

  import {    deserializeWidgetState,    Widget,+   PluginsProvider,+   pluginWidgetPivotTable,  } from "@activeviam/activeui-sdk";
+ const plugins = {+   widget: {+     "pivot-table": pluginWidgetPivotTable+   }+ };
  const App = () => {    return (+     <PluginsProvider value={plugins}>        <Widget queryId="abc" widgetState={widgetState} />+     </PluginsProvider>    );  };

ClientsProvider#

After fixing the PluginNotFoundError, you will face a ClientsNotFoundError. This is because Widget needs to interact with servers in order to run its query and retrieve user settings. To fix this error, you must use a ClientsProvider and provide two clients:

an ActivePivotClient, allowing children components to run MDX queries.
a ContentClient, allowing them to interact with a content server.

This can be done as follows. Note that you should replace the URLs in the snippet below in order to target your own servers.

  import {    deserializeWidgetState,    Widget,    PluginsProvider,    pluginWidgetPivotTable,+   createActivePivotClient,+   createContentClient,+   ClientsProvider,  } from "@activeviam/activeui-sdk";
+ const activePivotClient = createActivePivotClient({+   url: "https://activeui-tutorial-server.activeviam.com:9090",+   version: {+     id: "5",+     restPath: "/pivot/rest/v5",+     wsPath: "/pivot/ws/v5",+   },+ });++ const contentClient = createContentClient({+   url: "https://activeui-tutorial-server.activeviam.com:9090",+   version: {+     id: "5",+     restPath: "/content/rest/v5",+     wsPath: "/content/ws/v5",+   },+ });++ const clients = {+   activePivot: {+     "my-server": activePivotClient+   },+   contentClient+ }
  const App = () => {    return (+     <ClientsProvider value={clients}>        <PluginsProvider value={plugins}>          <Widget queryId="abc" widgetState={widgetState} />        </PluginsProvider>+     </ClientsProvider>    );  };

For the widget to work, you must call activePivotClient.loadDataModel. Otherwise, you will be prompted with an infinite "Loading data model for “my-server” message later on.

These functions can be called just once, when App is mounted.

+ import { useEffect } from "react";
  const App = () => {
+   useEffect(() => {+     activePivotClient.loadDataModel();+   }, [])
    return (      <ClientsProvider value={clients}>        <PluginsProvider value={plugins}>          <Widget queryId="abc" widgetState={widgetState} />        </PluginsProvider>      </ClientsProvider>    );  };

IntlProvider#

After fixing the ClientsNotFoundError, you will see a react-intl error:

[React Intl] Could not find required `intl` object. <IntlProvider> needs to exist in the component ancestry.

This is because Widget requires translations, in order to work for different locales.

To fix this error, you must first add react-intl as a dependency:

yarn add react-intl

IntlProvider can be imported from react-intl and used to provide the translations:

  import {    deserializeWidgetState,    Widget,    PluginsProvider,    pluginWidgetPivotTable,    createActivePivotClient,    createContentClient,    ClientsProvider,+   fetchTranslations,  } from "@activeviam/activeui-sdk";  import {    useEffect,+   useState,  } from "react";+ import { IntlProvider } from "react-intl";

  const App = () => {+   const [translations, setTranslations] = useState<Record<string, string> | null>(null);
    useEffect(() => {      activePivotClient.loadDataModel();+     const initTranslations = async () => {+       const fetchedTranslations = await fetchTranslations("en-US");+       setTranslations(fetchedTranslations);+     };+     initTranslations();    }, []);
+   if (translations === null) {+     return null;+   }
    return (+     <IntlProvider locale="en-US" messages={translations}>        <ClientsProvider value={clients}>          <PluginsProvider value={plugins}>            <Widget widgetState={widgetState} queryId="12345" />          </PluginsProvider>        </ClientsProvider>+     </IntlProvider>    )  };

ThemeProvider#

Next, you will encounter a "Missing theme" error:

Missing theme. Remember to add <ThemeProvider /> at the top of your application.

ActiveUI components require a Theme, defining their style.

Styling will require additional steps in order to work entirely. These steps are detailed in the last section in this page.

But first, you must use a ThemeProvider to provide a theme and get past this error:

  import {    deserializeWidgetState,    Widget,    PluginsProvider,    pluginWidgetPivotTable,    createActivePivotClient,    createContentClient,    ClientsProvider,    fetchTranslations,+   ThemeProvider,+   lightActiveViamTheme,  } from "@activeviam/activeui-sdk";
  const App = () => {    return (+     <ThemeProvider value={lightActiveViamTheme}>        <IntlProvider locale="en-US" messages={translations}>          <ClientsProvider value={clients}>            <PluginsProvider value={plugins}>              <Widget widgetState={widgetState} queryId="12345" />            </PluginsProvider>          </ClientsProvider>        </IntlProvider>+     </ThemeProvider>    )  };

UserProvider#

You are finally facing the last error of this stack: UserNotFoundError.

Widget is attempting to know who the current user is, in order to retrieve her settings. But no user is provided.

To fix this error, you must provide a user through UserProvider. This depends on how users are managed in your application, which goes beyond the scope of this guide.

To move forward, we will provide a dummy user. We will also create a new useEffect hook, which will call the contentClient.loadSettings function whenever user.username changes. This will ensure that the appropriate user settings are loaded.

  import {    deserializeWidgetState,    Widget,    PluginsProvider,    pluginWidgetPivotTable,    createActivePivotClient,    createContentClient,    ClientsProvider,    fetchTranslations,    ThemeProvider,    lightActiveViamTheme,+   UserProvider,  } from "@activeviam/activeui-sdk";
+ const user = {+   username: "anonymous",+   userRoles: ["ROLE_USER"]+ };
+  useEffect(() => {+      contentClient.loadSettings(user.username);+    }, [user.username]);

  const App = () => {    return (+     <UserProvider value={user}>        <ThemeProvider value={lightActiveViamTheme}>          <IntlProvider locale="en-US" messages={translations}>            <ClientsProvider value={clients}>              <PluginsProvider value={plugins}>                <Widget widgetState={widgetState} queryId="12345" />              </PluginsProvider>            </ClientsProvider>          </IntlProvider>        </ThemeProvider>+     </UserProvider>    )  };

Styling#

Providing a Theme (as shown above) is not enough to style the pivot table correctly.

Depending on the structure of your DOM, you might see a blinking message and then nothing:

invisible pivot table

If you do not see this problem, you can safely skip the section below.

Fix invisible pivot table#

In the case illustrated above, the pivot table unexpectedly remains invisible after the data model finishes loading.

To fix this issue, you must make sure that the pivot table's parent element has a non-zero height. Indeed, the pivot table is virtualized: it only appends children elements to the DOM depending on how much room is available for them, which makes it performant even in the case of very big datasets. In order to do so, it requires its parent element to have a defined height.

This fix depends on your project. For instance, if you generated it using create-react-app and are rendering the pivot table at the root of the application, like the snippets in this page do, then you can fix it by adding the following to your index.css:

html,body,#root {  height: 100%;}

Fix alignment#

At this point, the pivot table is visible but looks broken:

bad pivot table

To fix this, you must generate and attach the CSS corresponding to your theme.

To generate this CSS, you will require a new dependency called @activeviam/activeui-scripts:

yarn add @activeviam/activeui-scripts

Run it as follows:

yarn activeui-scripts generate-css --output-path ./src/style

Notice that it created a couple files under src/styles.

Import the one corresponding to your theme, in App.tsx:

import "./style/light-activeviam.antd.css";

In order for these styles to taken into account, Widget must have a parent with the "ant-root" className. Note that everything below the element with the "ant-root" className will be impacted by global styles, which can cause visual bugs to your application. You can therefore add this element just once at the top of your application if it works for you, or more locally around ActiveUI components otherwise.

+ <div className="ant-root" style={{height: "100%"}}>    <UserProvider value={user}>      <ThemeProvider value={lightActiveViamTheme}>        <IntlProvider locale="en-US" messages={translations}>          <ClientsProvider value={clients}>            <PluginsProvider value={plugins}>              <Widget widgetState={widgetState} queryId="12345" />            </PluginsProvider>          </ClientsProvider>        </IntlProvider>      </ThemeProvider>    </UserProvider>+ </div>