More and more organizations are moving into Headless and Microservice architecture space.  When talking about Headless, what’s the first thing on top of your head?  Yes, that’s right! Single page application (SPA).  The most popular front-end frameworks for a SPA are ReactJS, Angular and Vue etc.  Sitecore saw the trends and introduced JSS when Sitecore 9 is released.  In this article , I’m going to show you how to leverage JSS to build you organization components library that can be reused crossing all projects.

What’s JSS

Sitecore JavaScript Services (JSS) is a complete SDK for JavaScript developers that enables you to build full-fledged solutions using Sitecore and modern JavaScript UI libraries and frameworks.  Use your favourite JavaScript framework. Here is the JSS official documentation, if you want to know more.

Get Started

In order to build a JSS component library that can be reused by other teams, you will need to create npm module. If you don’t know what’s npm module, please read the official document here.

The sample component I’m going to build contains an Image, title and description as shown below

Create component library

Here is the code example of the sample component1.

The component1inherits from JSS components Text, Image, RichText.

To make it simple here, I didn’t customize the styling. In my next JSS post will show you how to create theme.

Once you complete the component1, you can publish into npm.

Follow the below steps for publishing the npm module

• create package.json in which you will need to add devDependencies and peerDependencies.
• installing babel and config the babel.config.js

npm install --save-dev @babel/core @babel/cli @babel/preset-env @babel/preset-react

• Last is to include dist folder

"files": [
    "dist/*"
],

Now, you library is ready to be used for your projects.

Next step I’m going to show you how to use the library in the project.

Using the component library

Install the library you just created in your project with the below commend.

npm i qbe-jss-library

Once it is installed, the component can be used either in a page directly or be used to create a custom variation.  Lets say you want to add a <h2> on top of the sample component1component. 

Noticed instead of importing JSS library. I’m importing the custom library i.e. qbe-jss-library, and passing the value to the component1 .

Done! 

run mpn start

As you can see here,  the custom library can be easily imported into project and reused by different team. The benefits are obvious

• High Reusability
• High maintainability
• High Consistency

Hope you enjoyed reading my article. Please feel free to leave your message, if you have any questions.

Headless CMS enabled architect to  separate the content from the display layer or the front-end user experience. It is rising in popularity in the development world.  This model allows breakthrough user experience by giving developers the great flexibility to innovate, as well as empowering architects to design the most scalable, decoupled solution.  So, as a developer, are you ready for taking the challenge? 

If not, skill up yourself and get ready!  In this article, I’m going to explain some of the essential/popular technologies and tools for you.

NPM/Yarn

NPM stands for Node Package Manager. If you are a .net backend developer, it’s similar to Nuget package which keeps track of all the packages and their versions. It allows the developers to easily update/remove them from the solution. Yarn is similar to NPM but with high performance. Yarn install packages in parallel. 

Babel

Bable is a JavaScript transpiler that converts new JS code into old ones i.e. convert ES6 code into ES5, which allows developers to use latest JS specifications without worrying about the browser’s compatibility

Webpack

Webpack is used to compile JavaScript modules, used for managing assets, styles, and compilation. it supports Sass, postCSS, UglifyJs etc.

ES6

JavaScript ES6 brings new syntax and new awesome features to make your code more modern and more readable. It allows you to write less code and do more. Learn more ES6 from here http://es6-features.org/

Sitecore JSS

Sitecore JavaScript Services (JSS) is a complete SDK for JavaScript developers that enables you to build full-fledged solutions using Sitecore and modern JavaScript UI libraries and frameworks.

JSS is comprised of a series of APIs and services. At a fundamental level JSS extends Sitecore's dynamic, component-based layout model to the frontend. Whereas in a traditional JS application each route tends to host known components, in a JSS app a route's components and their data are defined dynamically by Sitecore (or disconnected data when in disconnected mode).

Driving layout dynamically enables JSS apps to support content editor driven layouts and support data-driven personalization and multivariate testing - all the power of Sitecore with all the flexibility of a headless deployment model.