Starry-Eyed: Crafting Stellar Ratings with react-star-rating-input

react-star-rating-input is a versatile library designed for integrating star rating systems into React applications. Whether you’re building an interactive input control or simply displaying ratings, this library offers an easy-to-use solution. With its default setting of five stars, it provides flexibility for customization based on user needs.

Shining Features

• Interactive Input Control: Allows users to select and change their ratings dynamically.
• Passive Rating Display: Perfect for showcasing static ratings without user interaction.
• Customizable Star Count: Adjust the number of stars to fit your application’s requirements.

Setting Up Your Star Rating

To get started with react-star-rating-input, you need to install the library using either npm or yarn:

npm install --save react-star-rating-input

or

yarn add react-star-rating-input

Basic Implementation

Creating an Interactive Star Rating

To create an interactive star rating component, you can use StarRatingInput. Here’s a simple example:

import React, { useState } from 'react';
import { StarRatingInput } from 'react-star-rating-input';

const InteractiveStarRating = () => {
  const [rating, setRating] = useState(0);

  return (
    <div>
      <h2>Rate our service:</h2>
      <StarRatingInput
        value={rating}
        onChange={(value) => setRating(value)}
        size={5}
      />
      <p>Your rating is: {rating} stars</p>
    </div>
  );
};

export default InteractiveStarRating;

In this example, we initialize a state variable rating to keep track of the selected number of stars. The StarRatingInput component is used to render the stars, which can be clicked to change the rating.

Displaying Static Ratings

For displaying static ratings, you can use StarRating. This is useful when you want to show ratings without allowing changes:

import React from 'react';
import { StarRating } from 'react-star-rating-input';

const StaticStarRating = () => {
  const ratingValue = 4;

  return (
    <div>
      <h2>Customer Rating:</h2>
      <StarRating value={ratingValue} size={5} />
    </div>
  );
};

export default StaticStarRating;

Here, StarRating is used to display a fixed number of stars representing the rating value.

Advanced Usage

Customizing Star Size and Count

You can customize both the size and count of stars in your components. This flexibility allows you to tailor the appearance to fit your design needs:

<StarRatingInput
  value={rating}
  onChange={(value) => setRating(value)}
  size={10} // Number of stars displayed
/>

Handling User Interactions

To handle user interactions effectively, ensure that your component updates state correctly and reflects changes in real-time:

const handleChange = (value: number) => {
  console.log(`Selected ${value} stars`);
  setRating(value);
};

<StarRatingInput value={rating} onChange={handleChange} size={5} />

This approach allows you to capture user input and perform actions such as logging or updating other parts of your application based on the selected rating.

Wrapping Up

The react-star-rating-input library provides a straightforward way to integrate both interactive and static star ratings into your React applications. Its flexibility in customization and ease of use make it an excellent choice for developers looking to enhance their user interfaces with intuitive rating systems. Whether you’re capturing user feedback or displaying product reviews, this library has you covered. For further exploration of similar tools, check out articles on enhancing UI components like React Shadow Scroll or PrimeReact for more inspiration.