draft-js vs react-draft-wysiwyg
Rich Text Editors for React Comparison
1 Year
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What's Rich Text Editors for React?

Draft.js and React-Draft-WYSIWYG are both libraries designed to facilitate the creation of rich text editors within React applications. Draft.js is a framework for building text editors that can handle complex content structures, providing a robust API for managing content state, selection, and custom rendering. It is highly customizable and allows developers to create editors that can support various text styles, links, and embedded media. On the other hand, React-Draft-WYSIWYG is a higher-level wrapper around Draft.js that offers a more user-friendly, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) interface. It provides a set of pre-built toolbar options and a more straightforward implementation for developers who want to quickly integrate a rich text editor without delving deep into the complexities of Draft.js.

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draft-js833,12022,581-9555 years agoMIT
react-draft-wysiwyg268,5766,463299 kB754-MIT
Feature Comparison: draft-js vs react-draft-wysiwyg

Customization

  • draft-js:

    Draft.js offers extensive customization options, allowing developers to define their own block types, inline styles, and custom decorators. This flexibility enables the creation of unique text editing experiences tailored to specific application requirements, such as custom formatting or embedding media.

  • react-draft-wysiwyg:

    React-Draft-WYSIWYG provides a more limited customization scope compared to Draft.js, focusing instead on a pre-defined set of toolbar options and styles. While it allows some level of customization through props, it is primarily designed for ease of use rather than deep customization.

Ease of Use

  • draft-js:

    Draft.js has a steeper learning curve due to its lower-level API and the need for developers to manage content state and rendering manually. This can be challenging for those unfamiliar with the intricacies of React state management and rendering cycles.

  • react-draft-wysiwyg:

    React-Draft-WYSIWYG is designed for ease of use, providing a WYSIWYG interface that abstracts much of the complexity involved in rich text editing. Developers can quickly set up an editor with minimal configuration, making it accessible for those who may not be as experienced with React.

Integration

  • draft-js:

    Draft.js integrates seamlessly with React applications, allowing for fine-grained control over the editor's behavior and state. It can be easily combined with other state management libraries, such as Redux, to manage the editor's content and state effectively.

  • react-draft-wysiwyg:

    React-Draft-WYSIWYG also integrates well with React, but its higher-level abstraction means that it may not provide the same level of control as Draft.js. It is suitable for applications that require a straightforward editor without the need for extensive state management.

Performance

  • draft-js:

    Draft.js is optimized for performance, especially when handling large amounts of text or complex content structures. Its content state management is efficient, allowing for smooth rendering and updates without significant performance overhead.

  • react-draft-wysiwyg:

    React-Draft-WYSIWYG, while performant for standard use cases, may experience performance issues with very large documents or complex customizations due to its additional layers of abstraction. It is generally suitable for typical use cases but may require optimization for more demanding scenarios.

Community and Support

  • draft-js:

    Draft.js has a strong community and is maintained by Facebook, ensuring regular updates and a wealth of resources, including documentation and examples. This support makes it easier for developers to find solutions and best practices when using the library.

  • react-draft-wysiwyg:

    React-Draft-WYSIWYG, while popular, has a smaller community compared to Draft.js. However, it still offers good documentation and examples, making it accessible for developers looking for a quick implementation of a rich text editor.

How to Choose: draft-js vs react-draft-wysiwyg
  • draft-js:

    Choose Draft.js if you need a highly customizable and flexible text editor that allows for deep integration with your application's state management and requires a tailored solution for specific content editing needs. It is ideal for applications that need to manage complex text structures or custom rendering.

  • react-draft-wysiwyg:

    Choose React-Draft-WYSIWYG if you prefer a ready-to-use WYSIWYG editor with a rich set of features and a straightforward setup. It is suitable for projects where you want to quickly implement a rich text editing experience without extensive customization.

README for draft-js

draftjs-logo

Draft.js

Build Status npm version

Live Demo


Draft.js is a JavaScript rich text editor framework, built for React and backed by an immutable model.

  • Extensible and Customizable: We provide the building blocks to enable the creation of a broad variety of rich text composition experiences, from basic text styles to embedded media.
  • Declarative Rich Text: Draft.js fits seamlessly into React applications, abstracting away the details of rendering, selection, and input behavior with a familiar declarative API.
  • Immutable Editor State: The Draft.js model is built with immutable-js, offering an API with functional state updates and aggressively leveraging data persistence for scalable memory usage.

Learn how to use Draft.js in your own project.

API Notice

Before getting started, please be aware that we recently changed the API of Entity storage in Draft. The latest version, v0.10.0, supports both the old and new API. Following that up will be v0.11.0 which will remove the old API. If you are interested in helping out, or tracking the progress, please follow issue 839.

Getting Started

npm install --save draft-js react react-dom

or

yarn add draft-js react react-dom

Draft.js depends on React and React DOM which must also be installed.

Using Draft.js

import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import {Editor, EditorState} from 'draft-js';

class MyEditor extends React.Component {
  constructor(props) {
    super(props);
    this.state = {editorState: EditorState.createEmpty()};
    this.onChange = (editorState) => this.setState({editorState});
    this.setEditor = (editor) => {
      this.editor = editor;
    };
    this.focusEditor = () => {
      if (this.editor) {
        this.editor.focus();
      }
    };
  }

  componentDidMount() {
    this.focusEditor();
  }

  render() {
    return (
      <div style={styles.editor} onClick={this.focusEditor}>
        <Editor
          ref={this.setEditor}
          editorState={this.state.editorState}
          onChange={this.onChange}
        />
      </div>
    );
  }
}

const styles = {
  editor: {
    border: '1px solid gray',
    minHeight: '6em'
  }
};

ReactDOM.render(
  <MyEditor />,
  document.getElementById('container')
);

Since the release of React 16.8, you can use Hooks as a way to work with EditorState without using a class.

import React from 'react';
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom';
import {Editor, EditorState} from 'draft-js';

function MyEditor() {
  const [editorState, setEditorState] = React.useState(
    EditorState.createEmpty()
  );

  const editor = React.useRef(null);

  function focusEditor() {
    editor.current.focus();
  }

  React.useEffect(() => {
    focusEditor()
  }, []);

  return (
    <div onClick={focusEditor}>
      <Editor
        ref={editor}
        editorState={editorState}
        onChange={editorState => setEditorState(editorState)}
      />
    </div>
  );
}

Note that the editor itself is only as tall as its contents. In order to give users a visual cue, we recommend setting a border and a minimum height via the .DraftEditor-root CSS selector, or using a wrapper div like in the above example.

Because Draft.js supports unicode, you must have the following meta tag in the <head> </head> block of your HTML file:

<meta charset="utf-8" />

Further examples of how Draft.js can be used are provided below.

Examples

Visit http://draftjs.org/ to try out a basic rich editor example.

The repository includes a variety of different editor examples to demonstrate some of the features offered by the framework.

To run the examples, first build Draft.js locally. The Draft.js build is tested with Yarn v1 only. If you're using any other package manager and something doesn't work, try using yarn v1:

git clone https://github.com/facebook/draft-js.git
cd draft-js
yarn install
yarn run build

then open the example HTML files in your browser.

Draft.js is used in production on Facebook, including status and comment inputs, Notes, and messenger.com.

Browser Support

| IE / Edge
IE / Edge | Firefox
Firefox | Chrome
Chrome | Safari
Safari | iOS Safari
iOS Safari | Chrome for Android
Chrome for Android | | --------- | --------- | --------- | --------- | --------- | --------- | | IE11, Edge [1, 2]| last 2 versions| last 2 versions| last 2 versions| not fully supported [3] | not fully supported [3]

[1] May need a shim or a polyfill for some syntax used in Draft.js (docs).

[2] IME inputs have known issues in these browsers, especially Korean (docs).

[3] There are known issues with mobile browsers, especially on Android (docs).

Resources and Ecosystem

Check out this curated list of articles and open-sourced projects/utilities: Awesome Draft-JS.

Discussion and Support

Join our Slack team!

Contribute

We actively welcome pull requests. Learn how to contribute.

License

Draft.js is MIT licensed.

Examples provided in this repository and in the documentation are separately licensed.