How to Create React Gantt Chart Component with dhtmlxGantt

Updated on May 28, 2019

We won’t stop till show you that you can use our Gantt chart library with any technology! And today is the turn of ReactJS, popular JavaScript component-based library. Following the steps of this tutorial, you’ll know how to create React Gantt chart app with some basic features. So, let’s start.

As always, you can find React gantt chart component demo on GitHub.

Creating a Simple React App

The very first thing we need to do is to initialize the application structure. For this, we are going to use Create React app tool. It can be installed with the following command:

yarn global add create-react-app

You can find some additional information in this article.

Then we create an app:

npx create-react-app gantt-react

When our app is created, we go to the folder and run it for the first time:

cd gantt-react
yarn start

The first steps are completed, and as a result, our app should be started on http://localhost:3000/

gantt chart react

Style agreement

In this tutorial we’ll use the following folder structure:
– Each component will be placed inside a separate folder, named after the component.
– Each folder will contain index.js file, which will explicitly specify which classes are exported by the component, and a file with the component implementation.
For example, when we create our Gantt component, it will have the following structure:

./src/components/Gantt/
|- Gantt.js
|- index.js
|- Gantt.css

Gantt.js will contain the implementation of the component, and index.js will export it:

import Gantt from './Gantt';
import './Gantt.css';
export default Gantt;

And the outer code will import the folder

import { Gantt } from "./components/Gantt";

That way if we add extra components to our Gantt, they will be defined under the same folder and it won’t affect imports and won’t clutter our folder structure.
Now, when we’ve sorted it out, let’s proceed.

Let’s start with our Gantt component.
The first thing you need is to add dhtmlxGantt package to your project.
A free version of it can be added via npm or yarn:

yarn add dhtmlx-gantt

Then, create src/components/Gantt folder.
Here we’ll add a React Component wrapper for dhtmlxGantt.
Create Gantt.js file and open it:
src/components/Gantt/Gantt.js:

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import { gantt } from 'dhtmlx-gantt';
import 'dhtmlx-gantt/codebase/dhtmlxgantt.css';
import './Gantt.css';

export default class Gantt extends Component {
componentDidMount() {

const { tasks } = this.props;
gantt.init(this.ganttContainer);
gantt.parse(tasks);
}

render() {
return (
<div
ref={ (input) => { this.ganttContainer = input } }
style={ { width: '100%', height: '100%' } }
></div>
);
}
}

Then add this code to Gantt.css:

html, body, #root,#root div:only-child, .gantt-container {
height: 100%;
}

And create an index.js file with the following content:

import Gantt from './Gantt';
export default Gantt;

What we have done here – we’ve created a react component that currently serves as a wrapper for dhtmlxGantt js library. dhtmlxGantt itself is a regular JS library that lives outside ReactJS world, thus we created a wrapper component.
Once our component is mounted, we initialize dhtmlxGantt and attach it to DOM. We can also populate it with the data passed via props.

Note, that since a free version of dhtmlxGantt has no destructor, we do not define componentWillUnmount. That also means that if we remove a component from react at some point, the instance of dhtmlxGantt will stay in memory and will be reused next time when the component is mounted again.

We have also specified xml_date config, which sets the format of dates that will come from the data source so that Gantt could parse them correctly.

Now let’s add Gantt to our App component. Note that we use hard-coded data for this sample:
./src/App.js:

import React, { Component } from 'react';
import Gantt from './components/Gantt';
import './App.css';

const data = {
data: [
{ id: 1, text: 'Task #1', start_date: '15-04-2019', duration: 3, progress: 0.6 },
{ id: 2, text: 'Task #2', start_date: '18-04-2019', duration: 3, progress: 0.4 }
],
links: [
{ id: 1, source: 1, target: 2, type: '0' }
]
};
class App extends Component {
render() {
return (
<div>
<div className="gantt-container">
<Gantt tasks={data}/>
</div>
</div>
);
}
}
export default App;

If we run the app now, we should see gantt chart with initial tasks on a page:

yarn start

react gantt chart

Configuring Gantt chart

Let’s explore the API of the component a bit more. If you implement an app with the Gantt chart, at some moment the client will ask you to add the ability to zoom the time scale of the Gantt chart.

How it’s usually done:

the time scale of dhtmlxGantt is defined by a number of settings, such as number of rows, time step of each row, format of labels, etc.
these settings can be changed dynamically

So you need to define several configuration presets for different zoom levels (minutes/hours/days/months/…) and give a user some kind of UI, usually a toggle or a slider, to switch between them.

Let’s try to implement it in React. Firstly, let’s go to the Gantt component and implement a couple of presets for time scale configuration.

Open Gantt.js. to add the following function to it:

setZoom(value) {
switch (value) {
case 'Hours':
gantt.config.scale_unit = 'day';
gantt.config.date_scale = '%d %M';

gantt.config.scale_height = 60;
gantt.config.min_column_width = 30;
gantt.config.subscales = [
{ unit:'hour', step:1, date:'%H' }
];
break;
case 'Days':
gantt.config.min_column_width = 70;
gantt.config.scale_unit = 'week';
gantt.config.date_scale = '#%W';
gantt.config.subscales = [
{ unit: 'day', step: 1, date: '%d %M' }
];
gantt.config.scale_height = 60;
break;
case 'Months':
gantt.config.min_column_width = 70;
gantt.config.scale_unit = 'month';
gantt.config.date_scale = '%F';
gantt.config.scale_height = 60;
gantt.config.subscales = [
{ unit:'week', step:1, date:'#%W' }
];
break;
default:
break;
}
}

shouldComponentUpdate(nextProps) {
return this.props.zoom !== nextProps.zoom;
}

componentDidUpdate() {
gantt.render();
}

Pay your attention to a couple of important things here. When using dhtmlxGantt, it’s expected that the chart will be mounted to DOM using gantt.init, and all further repaints will be called using gantt.render.

Thus, in addition to Component.render which will handle the initial render, we defined componentDidUpdate handler which will repaint gantt on updates.

And since repainting of gantt is quite a costly procedure, we’ll make sure that it’ll be called only when it’s needed by checking whether props have actually changed in shouldComponentUpdate.

Also add a call to render function beginning:

render() {
const { zoom } = this.props;
this.setZoom(zoom);
return (
<div
ref={(input) => { this.ganttContainer = input }}
style={{ width: '100%', height: '100%' }}
></div>
);
}

Now Gantt chart scales should be defined by a “zoom” property. If zoom property is changed we should call render function to redraw gantt with new scales.

Now, let’s add UI for selecting a zoom level. We’ll go with a simple toolbar and toggles.

Create the component Toolbar:

src/components/Toolbar/index.js:

import Toolbar from './Toolbar';
export default Toolbar;

src/components/Toolbar/Toolbar.js:

import React, { Component } from 'react';
export default class Toolbar extends Component {
handleZoomChange = (e) => {
if (this.props.onZoomChange) {
this.props.onZoomChange(e.target.value)
}
}
render() {
const zoomRadios = ['Hours', 'Days', 'Months'].map((value) => {
const isActive = this.props.zoom === value;
return (
<label key={ value } className={ `radio-label ${isActive ? 'radio-label-active': ''}` }>
<input type='radio'
checked={ isActive }
onChange={ this.handleZoomChange }
value={ value }/>
{ value }
</label>
);
});

return (
<div className="tool-bar">
<b>Zooming: </b>
{ zoomRadios }
</div>
);
}
}

As you can see it’s pretty straightforward – we add a group of radio buttons and provide onZoomChange handler for a parent component.

Here we add a toolbar to the App component:

import Toolbar from './components/Toolbar';

and a handler for change event:

state = {
currentZoom: 'Days'
};

handleZoomChange = (zoom) => {
this.setState({
currentZoom: zoom
});
}

JSX:

render() {
const { currentZoom } = this.state;
return (
<div>
<div className="zoom-bar">
<Toolbar
zoom={currentZoom}
onZoomChange={this.handleZoomChange}
/>
</div>
<div className="gantt-container">
<Gantt
tasks={data}
zoom={currentZoom}
/>
</div>
</div>
);
}

Now, each time a user selects zoom level in a toolbar, changes will be captured by the App, which will then pass an updated state to Gantt.

react gantt

Processing Changes Made in Gantt

What else would you need while adding a Gantt chart to your app? Most probably you’ll need to do something with changes that users make in a Gantt chart – send changes to the backend or update other components.

In this tutorial we won’t cover saving changes to the database, instead, we’ll show how to capture these changes, and then pass them somewhere in the app.

You can capture Gantt changes using the special dataProcessor module, embedded into dhtmlxGantt. It can serve as a single point for tracking user actions inside Gantt.

Here is how it can be used. Open src/components/Gantt/Gantt.js and add the following method:

initGanttDataProcessor() {
const onDataUpdated = this.props.onDataUpdated;
this.dataProcessor = gantt.createDataProcessor((entityType, action, item, id) => {
return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
if (onDataUpdated) {
onDataUpdated(entityType, action, item, id);
}
return resolve();
});
});
}
componentWillUnmount() {
if (this.dataProcessor) {
this.dataProcessor.destructor();
this.dataProcessor = null;
}
}

That’s how we can capture all changes made in Gantt and send them to the parent component.

Note that we also save the dataProcessor instance returned from createDataProcessor and clean it up in componentWillUnmount.

Now update App component – what we want to do here is to simply catch events, create descriptive messages for them and put those messages into the local state:

state = {
currentZoom: 'Days',
messages: [],
};
addMessage(message) {
const maxLogLength = 5;
const newMessate = { message };
const messages = [
newMessate,
...this.state.messages
];

if (messages.length > maxLogLength) {
messages.length = maxLogLength;
}
this.setState({ messages });
}

logDataUpdate = (entityType, action, itemData, id) => {
let text = itemData && itemData.text ? ` (${itemData.text})`: '';
let message = `${entityType} ${action}: ${id} ${text}`;
if (entityType === 'link' && action !== 'delete' ) {
message += ` ( source: ${itemData.source}, target: ${itemData.target} )`;
}
this.addMessage(message);
}

After that, create a component that will display these messages on the page:

import React, { Component } from 'react';

export default class MessageArea extends Component {
render() {
const messages = this.props.messages.map(({ message }) => {
return <li key={ Math.random() }>{message}</li>
});

return (
<div className="message-area">
<h3>Messages:</h3>
<ul>
{ messages }
</ul>
</div>
);
}
}

MessageArea.defaultProps = {
messages: []
};

And finally connect this component to the App:

imports:

import MessageArea from './components/MessageArea';

JSX:

render() {
const { currentZoom, messages } = this.state;
return (
<div>
<Toolbar
zoom={ currentZoom }
onZoomChange={ this.handleZoomChange }
/>
<div className="gantt-container">
<Gantt
data={ data }
zoom={ currentZoom }
onDataUpdated ={ this.logDataUpdate }
/>
</div>
<MessageArea
messages={ messages }
/>
</div>
}

How everything works now – each time a user changes something in Gantt, we call promise handler in the App component and update MessageArea, which prints action details on the page. It’s exactly what we wanted.

If we run the app now and change some tasks or links, we should see appropriate messages under the Gantt chart.

reactjs gantt chart

Download React gantt chart component demo from GitHub

Conclusion

Today we have shown you how to add a Gantt chart to ReactJS app, how to configure the Gantt chart and to process changes made by the user. As you can see, dhtmlxGantt allows doing it quite easily.

What would you like to see in our next articles about dhtmlxGantt?

We need your feedback to provide the right integrations at the right time. Please leave your requests in the comment section below.

Thank you in advance and stay tuned for new tutorials!

Create React Gantt Chart Component with dhtmlxGantt

Creating a Simple React App

Style agreement

Configuring Gantt chart

Processing Changes Made in Gantt

Conclusion

What would you like to see in our next articles about dhtmlxGantt?

Product

Technology

Create React Gantt Chart Component with dhtmlxGantt

Creating a Simple React App

Style agreement

Configuring Gantt chart

Processing Changes Made in Gantt

Conclusion

What would you like to see in our next articles about dhtmlxGantt?

Product

Technology

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