Introduction

A project for integrating Highcharts into a React app, with proper React components for each Highcharts/Highstock component. Inspired by Recharts, but for Highcharts, obviously.

Why React JSX Highcharts?

Unlike other React Highcharts wrapper libraries, React JSX Highcharts is designed to be dynamic - it is optimised for interactive charts that need to adapt to business logic in your React application.

Other Highcharts wrappers completely destroy and recreate the chart when the configuration options change, which is very wasteful and inefficient.

React JSX Highcharts uses a different approach. By providing React components for each Highcharts component, we can observe exactly which prop has changed and call the optimal Highcharts method behind the scenes. For example, if the data prop were to change on a <Series /> component, React JSX Highcharts can follow Highcharts best practices and use the setData method rather than the more expensive update.

React JSX Highcharts also enables you to write your own Highcharts components, via its exposed hooks.

Installation

npm install --save react-jsx-highcharts

You'll need the peer dependencies too

npm install --save react react-dom highcharts@^11.0.0

Licensing

React JSX Highcharts is free to use, however Highcharts itself requires a license for commercial use. Highcharts license FAQs.

Getting started

The intention of this library is to provide a very thin abstraction of Highcharts using React components. This has been achieved by passing Highcharts configuration options as component props.

In the vast majority of cases, the name of the configuration option, and the name of the component prop are the same.

Example

<Tooltip /> component

1<Tooltip padding={10} hideDelay={250} shape="square" split />

This corresponds to the Highcharts' tooltip configuration of

1tooltip: {
2  enabled: true, // This is assumed when component is mounted
3  padding: 10,
4  hideDelay: 250,
5  shape: 'square',
6  split: true
7}

We aim to pass all configuration options using the same name, so we use Highcharts' documentation to figure out how to achieve the same with React JSX Highcharts.

Note:

There are two exceptions to the above;

Exception 1

Where Highcharts events are concerned - instead of passing events as an object, we use the React convention onEventName.

Example

1<SplineSeries
2  id="my-series"
3  data={myData}
4  onHide={this.handleHide}
5  onShow={this.handleShow}
6/>

This would correspond to the Highcharts configuration

1series: [
2  {
3    type: 'spline',
4    id: 'my-series',
5    data: myData,
6    events: { hide: this.handleHide, show: this.handleShow }
7  }
8];

Exception 2

text configuration options are passed as a React child

Example

1<Title>Some Text Here</Title>

This would correspond to the Highcharts configuration

1title: {
2  text: 'Some Text Here';
3}

Example

1const MyChart = (props) => (
2  <HighchartsProvider Highcharts={Highcharts}>
3    <HighchartsChart>
4      <Chart />
5
6      <Title>Solar Employment Growth by Sector, 2010-2016</Title>
7
8      <Subtitle>Source: thesolarfoundation.com</Subtitle>
9
10      <Legend layout="vertical" align="right" verticalAlign="middle" />
11
12      <XAxis>
13        <XAxis.Title>Time</XAxis.Title>
14      </XAxis>
15
16      <YAxis>
17        <YAxis.Title>Number of employees</YAxis.Title>
18        <LineSeries name="Installation" data={[43934, 52503, 57177, 69658, 97031, 119931, 137133, 154175]} />
19        <LineSeries name="Manufacturing" data={[24916, 24064, 29742, 29851, 32490, 30282, 38121, 40434]} />
20        <LineSeries name="Sales & Distribution" data={[11744, 17722, 16005, 19771, 20185, 24377, 32147, 39387]} />
21        <LineSeries name="Project Development" data={[null, null, 7988, 12169, 15112, 22452, 34400, 34227]} />
22        <LineSeries name="Other" data={[12908, 5948, 8105, 11248, 8989, 11816, 18274, 18111]} />
23      </YAxis>
24    </HighchartsChart>
25  </HighchartsProvider>
26)

Demos

See here

Documentation

In progress... see here.

Upgrading from 3.x to 4.x

For the vast majority of cases, if your chart works in v3 of React JSX Highcharts it should work in v4 without any required changes (assuming the React version you're using supports Hooks).

Ok, so what about the minority of cases? Check out the list of breaking changes.

Changelog

As of 4.x the library has been completely rewritten to use React Hooks (with very few changes to the public API)

As of 3.x you are no longer required to use IDs for Axis, Series and PlotLines/Bands

Goals

This project aims to hide the complexity of Highcharts from the React application author, allowing the rendering of charts in a React familiar way.

It also aims to use best React and Highcharts practices where possible - for example if the data prop of a Series were to change React JSX Highcharts uses the Series.prototype.setData method of Highcharts which is much less expensive than update.

Additionally we avoid passing large JSON configuration objects as props, as this leads to painful debugging when trying to work out why your component did or did not re-render. This also helps as an abstraction over the complexity as mentioned above.

Technical approach

Rather than passing around a chart object between all the components, we utilise React's context to share the chart object around, then using Hooks call the appropriate Highcharts functions as component props are updated.

There are 5 exposed custom hooks in this project

• useHighcharts
• useChart
• useAxis
• useSeries
• usePlotBandLine

In the vast majority of cases, there is no need to use these Hooks directly - but they have been exposed anyway - they are useful if you want to create your own components with this library (example).

Common issues

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'chart' of undefined

You need to provide Highcharts for the components with <HighchartsProvider Highcharts={Highcharts}>.

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'stockChart' of undefined

As above, or you are importing Highcharts rather than Highstock. Change you Highcharts import to...

1import Highcharts from 'highcharts/highstock';

Highcharts error #17

You likely need to add an extra Highcharts module to support the requested series type. This is usually highcharts-more.

1import Highcharts from 'highcharts';
2import addHighchartsMore from 'highcharts/highcharts-more';
3
4addHighchartsMore(Highcharts);

Alternatively it may be the Heatmap, Treemap, Sankey, or one of these extra modules.

1import Highcharts from 'highcharts';
2import addHeatmapModule from 'highcharts/modules/heatmap';
3import addTreemapModule from 'highcharts/modules/treemap';
4
5addHeatmapModule(Highcharts);
6addTreemapModule(Highcharts);

I updated the data of my chart series, and the chart did not update

As Objects and Arrays are passed by reference, React thought your component props had not changed. You should clone the data object before modifying it. See the addDataPoint utility function used in the demos as an example.

My stock chart isn't rendering the Navigator and RangeSelector components

You're probably using a <HighchartsChart /> at the top level, rather than a <HighchartsStockChart />. Otherwise, please post an issue.