Building A UI With Queries

This guide covers how the ui-react module supports the Queries object.

As with the React-based bindings to a Store object, the ui-react module provides both hooks and components to connect your queries to your interface.

Queries Hooks

In previous guides, we've seen how the Queries methods follow the same conventions as raw Table methods, such as how The getResultRow method is the equivalent of the getRow method.

So it should be no surprise that the ui-react hooks follow the same convention, and that the hooks correspond to each of the Query getter methods:

• The useResultTable hook is the reactive equivalent of the getResultTable method.
• The useResultRowIds hook is the reactive equivalent of the getResultRowIds method.
• The useResultSortedRowIds hook is the reactive equivalent of the getResultSortedRowIds method.
• The useResultRow hook is the reactive equivalent of the getResultRow method.
• The useResultCellIds hook is the reactive equivalent of the getResultCellIds method.
• The useResultCell hook is the reactive equivalent of the getResultCell method.

Each hook registers a listener so that any relevant changes will cause a re-render. As an example:

const store = createStore().setTable('pets', {
  fido: {species: 'dog', color: 'brown'},
  felix: {species: 'cat', color: 'black'},
  cujo: {species: 'dog', color: 'black'},
});
const queries = createQueries(store).setQueryDefinition(
  'dogColors',
  'pets',
  ({select, where}) => {
    select('color');
    where('species', 'dog');
  },
);
const App = () => (
  <span>{JSON.stringify(useResultRowIds('dogColors', queries))}</span>
);

const app = document.createElement('div');
const root = ReactDOMClient.createRoot(app);
root.render(<App />);
console.log(app.innerHTML);
// -> '<span>["fido","cujo"]</span>'

store.setCell('pets', 'cujo', 'species', 'wolf');
console.log(app.innerHTML);
// -> '<span>["fido"]</span>'

The useCreateQueries hook is used to create a Queries object within a React application with convenient memoization:

const App2 = () => {
  const store = useCreateStore(() =>
    createStore().setTable('pets', {
      fido: {species: 'dog', color: 'brown'},
      felix: {species: 'cat', color: 'black'},
      cujo: {species: 'dog', color: 'black'},
    }),
  );
  const queries = useCreateQueries(store, (store) =>
    createQueries(store).setQueryDefinition(
      'dogColors',
      'pets',
      ({select, where}) => {
        select('color');
        where('species', 'dog');
      },
    ),
  );
  return <span>{JSON.stringify(useResultRowIds('dogColors', queries))}</span>;
};

root.render(<App2 />);
console.log(app.innerHTML);
// -> '<span>["fido","cujo"]</span>'

Queries Views

Entirely following convention, there are also components for rendering the contents of queries: the ResultTableView component, the ResultSortedTableView component, the ResultRowView component, and the ResultCellView component. Again, simple prefix the component names with Result.

And of course, each registers a listener so that any changes to that result will cause a re-render.

Just like their Store equivalents, these components can be given a custom components to render their children:

const MyResultRowView = (props) => (
  <span>
    {props.rowId}: <ResultCellView {...props} cellId="color" />
  </span>
);

const App3 = () => (
  <div>
    <ResultTableView
      queryId="dogColors"
      resultRowComponent={MyResultRowView}
      queries={queries}
    />
  </div>
);

store.setTable('pets', {
  fido: {species: 'dog', color: 'brown'},
  felix: {species: 'cat', color: 'black'},
  cujo: {species: 'dog', color: 'black'},
});

root.render(<App3 />);
console.log(app.innerHTML);
// -> '<div><span>fido: brown</span><span>cujo: black</span></div>'

Queries Context

In the same way that other objects can be passed into a Provider component context and used throughout the app, a Queries object can also be provided to be used by default:

const App4 = () => {
  const store = useCreateStore(() =>
    createStore().setTable('pets', {
      fido: {species: 'dog', color: 'brown'},
      felix: {species: 'cat', color: 'black'},
      cujo: {species: 'dog', color: 'black'},
    }),
  );
  const queries = useCreateQueries(store, (store) =>
    createQueries(store).setQueryDefinition(
      'dogColors',
      'pets',
      ({select, where}) => {
        select('color');
        where('species', 'dog');
      },
    ),
  );

  return (
    <Provider queries={queries}>
      <Pane />
    </Provider>
  );
};

const Pane = () => (
  <span>
    <ResultRowView queryId="dogColors" rowId="cujo" debugIds={true} />/
    {useRemoteRowId('dogColors', 'cujo')}
  </span>
);

root.render(<App4 />);
console.log(app.innerHTML);
// -> '<span>cujo:{color:{black}}/</span>'

The queriesById prop can be used in the same way that the storesById prop is, to let you reference multiple Queries objects by Id.

Summary

The support for Queries objects in the ui-react module is very similar to that for the Store object, making it easy to attach queries to your user interface.

We now move on to learning about the tools that TinyBase provides. Read more about these in the Developer Tools guide.