Frontend coding conventions

In this page you can find a collection of guidelines, style suggestions, and tips for making contributions to the codebase.

Two layers: Kea -> React

Our frontend webapp is written with Kea and React as two separate layers. Kea is used to organise the app's data for rendering (we call this the data or state layer), and React is used to render the computed state (this is the view or template layer).

We try to be very explicit about this separation, and avoid local React state wherever possible, with exceptions for the lib/ folder. Having all our data in one layer makes for code that's easier to test, and observe. Basically, getting your data layer right is hard enough. We aim to not make it harder by constraining your data to a DOM-style hierarchy.

Hence the explicit separation between the data and view layers.

General tips

• Think data first: get your mental model of the data flowing through the app right, and then everything else will be simpler.
• Be practical, yet remember that you are balancing speed of delivery with ease of maintainability. If you have to choose: code should be easier to understand than it was to write.

Do-s & Don't-s

• General
  • Write all new code with TypeScript and proper typing.
  • Write your frontend data handling code first, and write it in a Kea logic.
  • Don't use useState or useEffect to store local state. It's false convenience. Take the extra 3 minutes and change it to a logic early on in the development.
  • Logics still have a tiny initialization cost. Hence this rule doesn't apply to library components in the lib/ folder, which might be rendered hundreds of times on a page with different sets of data. Still feel free to write a logic for a complicated lib/ component when needed.
  • Use named exports (export const DashboardMenu = () => <div />), and avoid default exports.
• Naming things:
  • Always look around the codebase for naming conventions, and follow the best practices of the environment (e.g. use camelCase variables in JS, snake_case in Python).
  • Use clear, yet functional names (searchResults vs data).
  • Logics are camelCase (dashboardLogic)
  • React components are PascalCase (DashboardMenu).
  • Props for both logics and components are PascalCase and end with Props (DashboardLogicProps & DashboardMenuProps)
  • Name the .ts file according to its main export: DashboardMenu.ts or DashboardMenu.tsx or dashboardLogic.ts or Dashboard.scss. Pay attention to the case.
  • Avoid index.ts, styles.css, and other generic names, even if this is the only file in a directory.
• Scenes & tabs
  • Our app is built of tabs that contain scenes, managed through a scene router in sceneLogic.
  • A scene is the smallest unit in the router and for code splitting. Usually we split scenes by resource type (dashboard, insight) and function (edit, index).
  • Each scene (e.g. Dashboards) exports an object of type SceneExport, containing the scene's root logic and its React component.
  • The scene's logic is automatically mounted if on a tab, and receives a tabId: string prop. It's strongly recommended to key your logic with this tabId.
  • It's also strongly recommended to add the tabAwareScene() function to your scene's logic. This catches bugs when mounting the logic from somewhere without the tabId prop.
  • Instead of urlToAction and actionToUrl, use tabAwareUrlToAction and tabAwareActionToUrl. Try to only only use them on the scene's logic, not in any deeper logics.
  • When a scene becomes inactive (you open a different tab), it's still around in the background. However any logics mounted by React components through the view layer will unmount. Use useAttachedLogic(dataNoteLogic(propsFromComponent), mySceneLogic({ tabId })) to attach any logic to a scene logic. It'll persist until the scene's logic is unmounted, surviving React component remounts.
  • You can control what's shown on the tab via the breadcrumbs selector in your scene's logic. The last breadcrumb controls the title and the icon, the one before that controls the back button. If there are more breadcrumbs, they will be ignored.
• Kea
  • It's worth repeating: think of the data flow. Then work to simplify it. Derive as much state as possible via selectors, update the source via cascading actions, and avoid complex loops where a value triggers a subscription which calls an action which changes the value which triggers the subscription, ...
  • Use subscriptions and propsChanged sparingly, only if you can't find any other way. These have a high chance of leading to messy, cyclic or slow data flows.
  • Try to write your code such that you only use urlToAction in your scene's logic (e.g. insightSceneLogic), and never deeper down in e.g. propertyFilterLogic.
  • Take the time and read through the Kea docs until you can explain how all the various operations (actions, reducers, selectors, listeners, subscriptions, props, events, hooks, etc) work behind the scenes. It's worth knowing your tools.
• CSS
  • We use Tailwind CSS wherever possible
  • Where it's not possible
    • We use regular SCSS files for styling to keep things simple and maintainable in the long run, as opposed to supporting the CSS-in-JS flavour of the month.
    • Inside MyBlogComponent.tsx import MyBlogComponent.scss
    • Namespace all your CSS rules under globally unique classes that match the component's name and case, for example .DashboardMenu { put everything here }
    • We loosely follow BEM conventions. If an element can't be namespaced inside a container class (e.g. modals that break out of the containing DOM element), use BEM style names like .DashboardMenu__modal to keep things namespaced.
  • Keep an eye out for custom styles in SCSS files that can be easily replaced with Tailwind classes and replace them with Tailwind when you see them
• Testing
  • Write logic tests for all logic files.
  • If your component is in the lib/ folder, and has some interactivity, write a react testing library test for it.
  • Add all new presentational elements and scenes to our storybook. Run pnpm storybook locally.