Elm UI Explorer

UI Component Explorers and Style Guides have been around for a while now. We don't build pages anymore but components that are assembled together to build systems.

In the Elm world, components are just called views, and are defined as pure functions. Elm UI Explorer takes advantage of the composability and the purity of Elm and offers a way to showcase your views and their states in a single tool. This project is inspired by React Storybook and styled with Tailwind

How to use it ?

Quick Start

First install the cli.

npm install @kalutheo/uie

Then initialize your project.

uie init

To run your explorer:

npm run uie

Finally, you should be able to see your explorer by visiting http://localhost:8000

Manual Setup

Here is a basic example of a button showcased in Elm UI Explorer:

Add this to your Main.elm file.

import Html
import Html.Attributes exposing (style)
import UIExplorer exposing (UIExplorerProgram, defaultConfig, explore, storiesOf)


button : String -> String -> Html.Html msg
button label bgColor =
    Html.button
        [ style "background-color" bgColor ]
        [ Html.text label ]


main : UIExplorerProgram {} () {}
main =
    explore
        defaultConfig
        [ storiesOf
            "Button"
            [ ( "SignIn", \_ -> button "Sign In" "pink", {} )
            , ( "SignOut", \_ -> button "Sign Out" "cyan", {} )
            , ( "Loading", \_ -> button "Loading please wait..." "white", {} )
            ]
        ]

Then in your Html add a link to the Elm UI Explorer stylesheet

<link
  rel="stylesheet"
  type="text/css"
  href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/gh/kalutheo/elm-ui-explorer@master/assets/styles.css"
/>

You can now run the Main.elm application with the tool of your choice.

Examples

Simple - The simplest example
Notes & Code - How to add markdown and source code to your explorer
Custom Menu - Advanced example with custom MenuViewEnhancer
Knobs - How to make interactive stories
Design System - A real world example of a Design System

Checkout all examples source code here

Main Features

Deep linking: You can easily share UI Explorer states by copying and pasting the url ( ex: attach them to your JIRA tickets, Pull Request etc... )
Categories: Your UI Explorer can be divided into categories. Convenient if you have many views and you want to group them by family.

Plugins: Elm UI Explorer has a mechanism that let you extend the tool by creating your own plugins. By defaults the library comes with built in plugins.

Customization: You can make the header match your brand identity by changing colors, title and icons.
Responsivness: The explorer navigation is adapted for devices with small screens.
Dark mode: For aesthetic purposes, Dark mode can be enabled with one click.

Best Practices

For hot reloading, it's recommended to use Create Elm App. Elm Live is also a great alternative that provides live reloading.
In order to avoid CSS conflicts with built in UI Explorer Styles, consider using elm-css or elm-ui. Theses tools use technics that prevent styles collisions by scoping the css.
Try to adopt SDD (StoryBook Driven Development), creating UI this way can be very efficient.
Use Atomic Design paradigm. This will help you build a scalable Design System.