Kits: rendering a namespaced component from Phlex

[nimmolo]

I'm using Kits. I have module Components, which extends Phlex::Kit, defined in config/initializers/phlex.rb.

My Panel component includes Components and it needs to render some namespaced sub-components like Panel::Heading and Panel::Body, etc. It seems that because of the namespacing, i can't use the shorter Kits syntax.

I'm getting NoMethodError for Heading in all these cases. None of the following work:

class Components::Panel < Components::Base
  include Components

  prop :heading, _Nilable(String), default: nil
  ...

  def render_heading
    # Panel::Heading(...) <- doesn't work
    # Heading(...)        <- doesn't work
    # Panel.Heading(...)  <- doesn't work

To be clear, this file exists at components/panel/heading.rb

class Components::Panel::Heading < Components::Base
  # include Components <- doesn't work
  ...

How do i render these sub components from Panel without calling render? The docs aren't explicit on this.

[joeldrapper]

At the moment, you can’t do that. Kits have to be modules so that they can be included. So a class can’t be a kit.

We could potentially make it work on the class itself or from external references. It’s a tricky problem because I don’t want people to have the expectation that they can include the class.

I personally tend to keep all my components at the top level. So I would have a Componnets::PanelHeading rather than Components::Panel::Heading.

[nimmolo]

Not being able to use Kit syntax is good enough reason for me to keep them top level too.

I do feel like there could be a note in the docs warning about this, or just recommending not to namespace components, but i'm not sure where. Maybe the Kits page is the best page for thst.

[joeldrapper]

Yeah, the documentation could definitely be improved here. You can namespace components under modules under a kit and those modules automatically become kits. But you can’t make the namespace a class.

[nimmolo]

Ah. That makes sense.

So in my example above, I couldn't have both a top-level Panel component (which would be a class) and have sub-components like Panel::Heading be callable with Kit syntax. That would require Panel (as a module) to be a Kit.

[nimmolo]

I can propose a PR for the Kits documentation that would add info and a recommendation about namespacing, if you like.