10 Storybook Best Practices
Storybook is a powerful tool for developing and testing React components. Here are 10 best practices for using storybook to its full potential.
Storybook is a development environment for React, React Native, Vue, Angular, and more. It allows you to create and view individual component states and workflows without running your entire application. This article covers 10 best practices for working with Storybook.
1. Use storybook to document your components
When you’re building a UI component library, it’s important that your components are well-documented so that other developers can easily use and understand them. Storybook provides a great way to do this by allowing you to write stories for each of your components.
Not only does this make it easy for others to see how your components work, but it also allows you to test your components in isolation from your app. This is especially important when you’re building complex components that rely on state or data from an API.
So, if you’re not already using storybook to document your components, I highly recommend you start doing so. It will save you a lot of time in the long run.
2. Write stories for all the states of a component
When you’re building a UI component, there are usually multiple states that it can be in. For example, a button component can have a “normal” state, a “hover” state, a “disabled” state, and so on.
It’s important to write stories for all of these states because it allows you to test all the different permutations of your component. This way, you can be confident that your component will work as expected no matter what state it’s in.
Not only that, but writing stories for all the states of a component also makes it easier for other developers to understand how the component works. They can see all the different states that the component can be in and how it behaves in each state.
3. Group and organize your stories in folders
When your project gets big, it becomes difficult to find the story you’re looking for if they’re all in one place. By grouping them into folders, you can easily find the stories you need and keep your project organized.
Not only that, but this also makes it easier for other people to contribute to your project because they can quickly see where they need to add their stories.
4. Add knobs to make it easy to test different props
Suppose you’re building a component that takes a user’s name and age as props. You could create a story like this:
<br>storiesOf('MyComponent', module)<br> .add('with default props', () => (<br> <MyComponent /><br> ))<br> .add('with different props', () => (<br> <MyComponent<br> name="John"<br> age={20}<br> /><br> ));<br>
This is fine for testing different props, but it quickly becomes tedious if you have a lot of props to test. This is where knobs come in.
With the knob add-on, you can dynamically change the props within the storybook UI:
<br>storiesOf('MyComponent', module)<br> .addDecorator(withKnobs)<br> .add('with different props', () => (<br> <MyComponent<br> name={text('Name', 'John')}<br> age={number('Age', 20)}<br> /><br> ));<br>
Now you can easily test different props without having to manually edit the code.
5. Keep your stories short and simple
When a story is too long, readers lose interest and focus. On the other hand, if a story is too short, it might feel unfinished or abrupt. The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle.
The best way to find the right length for your stories is to experiment and see what works best for you and your audience. There’s no magic number, but as a general rule of thumb, try to keep your stories under 500 words.
6. Use StoryShots to create snapshots of your components
StoryShots takes a snapshot of your component and stores it in a JSON file. When you make changes to your component, StoryShots will automatically update the snapshot. This is important because it allows you to see exactly what has changed between versions of your component, which can be very helpful when debugging.
It’s also worth noting that StoryShots is not limited to React components; it can also be used with other frameworks such as Vue and Angular.
7. Use MDX to write long-form documentation
MDX is a syntax that lets you mix JSX in Markdown files. This makes it possible to write complex components with interactive examples, inline code snippets, and more. And because MDX is just Markdown, it’s easy to learn and use.
Writing long-form documentation in Storybook gives you the ability to go beyond simple component demos. You can provide detailed explanations, usage examples, tips, and more. This makes it easier for new users to understand your components and speeds up development for everyone.
Plus, when your documentation is written in Storybook, it’s always in sync with your code. So if you make a change to your component, your docs will automatically update.
8. Organize your stories using addons like addon-docs or addon-info
When you have a large number of stories, it can be difficult to keep track of what each one is supposed to do. By using an addon like addon-docs, you can add documentation to each story that describes its purpose. This way, when you or someone else needs to reference a particular story, they can easily find it and understand what it’s supposed to do.
Similarly, addon-info allows you to add information about the component under test to each story. This is especially useful when testing complex components with many different states. By adding information about the component’s props, state, and methods to each story, you can make it much easier to understand what the component is supposed to do and how it should behave.
9. Make use of the decorators feature
The decorators feature allows you to add additional behavior to your stories without having to modify the underlying code. This is extremely useful for testing purposes, as it allows you to test different variations of your component without having to duplicate or maintain multiple copies of your code.
It also makes it easy to share stories between projects, as you can simply import the decorator into your project and use it there.
Finally, decorators are a great way to encapsulate common behavior that you want to reuse across multiple stories. For example, if you find yourself adding a certain CSS class to many of your stories, you can create a decorator that does that for you, and then apply it to all the relevant stories.
10. Create custom addons to extend storybook’s functionality
While storybook is an amazing tool with a lot of built-in functionality, there will always be cases where you need something that’s not included out-of-the-box. That’s where custom addons come in.
Creating a custom addon is relatively simple and only requires a few lines of code. And once you’ve created your addon, you can share it with the rest of the storybook community by publishing it on npm.
So if you find yourself needing something that storybook doesn’t provide, don’t hesitate to create a custom addon. It’s a great way to contribute to the storybook community and make sure that everyone can benefit from your work.