react-tela

Use React to render images, shapes and text to <canvas>

Warning

This package is currently under development. Expect breaking changes.

react-tela is a React renderer that draws components to a <canvas> node.

Features

• Low-level
  • The base components expose only the main Canvas primitives (images, shapes and text)
  • Leverage the power of React to create high-level abstractions over the base components
• Unopinionated about runtime environment
  • Works in web browsers, Node.js, but was specifically created for nx.js
  • Never makes assumptions about anything "outside" of the provided canvas node

Example

// App.jsx
import React from "react";
import { Group, Rect, Text, useDimensions } from "react-tela";

function Contents() {
    const dims = useDimensions();
    return <>
        <Rect width={dims.width} height={dims.height} fill="purple" alpha={0.5} />
        <Text fontSize={32} fontFamily="Geist" fill="white">
            Hello world!
        </Text>
    </>;
}

export function App() {
	return (
		<Group x={5} y={15} width={180} height={30} rotate={0.1}>
            <Contents />
		</Group>
	);
}

In web browser

import React from "react";
import { render } from "react-tela/render";
import { App } from "./App";

render(<App />, document.getElementById("canvas"));

In nx.js

import React from "react";
import { render } from "react-tela/render";
import { App } from "./App";

render(<App />, screen);

In Node.js

import React from "react";
import { render } from "react-tela/render";
import config, { Canvas } from "@napi-rs/canvas";
import { App } from "./App";

const canvas = new Canvas(300, 150);
await render(<App />, canvas, config);

const buffer = canvas.toBuffer("image/png");
// … do something with PNG `buffer`

What is "tela"? 🇧🇷

The word "tela" is the Portuguese word for "canvas" or "screen".

tela > [ˈtɛla] (feminine noun)

1. (de pintar) canvas
2. (cinema, telecommunications) screen

Since the name react-canvas was already taken, using react-tela was a fun alternative.

Prior Art

A few other React renderes for <canvas> alreay exist, so why another?

react-tela is designed to make as little assumptions about the runtime environment as possible. Others renderers assume they are running in a web browser, or possibly Node.js. This module only interacts with the canvas node it is provided, and never makes any assumptions about anything "outside" of the node.

• react-art
  • Nice because it would appear to be an official solution. The code is located in the react monorepo itself.
  • However documentation and examples are basically non-existent, and this does not seem to be actively maintained.
• react-canvas
  • Perfect name. Nice API. Probably one of the original React <canvas> implementations.
  • Has not been updated in years, and is not currently maintained.
• react-konva
  • Awesome and very mature. Would love to have just been able to use this.
  • It relies on react-dom, which is pretty large, and makes the assumption that a DOM is actually available.