Working With Dialogs In Material UI V5

Introduction

When I first started working with Material UI, I was intrigued by the concept of dialogs. Dialogs are an essential component of any user interface because they can convey information succinctly and elegantly. However, it wasn’t immediately clear to me how to work with this component. In this article, I will guide you through everything you need to know about dialogs in Material UI and how to work with them in your applications.

Understanding Material UI Dialogs

Before we jump into the nitty-gritty of how to create a dialog in Material UI, let’s first define what a dialog is. In short, a dialog is a modal component that pops up on top of your existing interface and captures the user’s attention. It can be used to convey critical information, showcase a confirmation message, or allow the user to perform a specific action.

Material UI provides several types of dialogs, each with its own specific use case. The most common type of dialog is a Dialog component, but there are also Alert, Confirm, and Prompt dialogs. These dialogs vary in functionality and design, so it’s essential to know which type of dialog you need before you start.

Creating a Simple Dialog

Now that we understand what a dialog is let’s move on to creating our first one. Material UI provides a Dialog component that you can use to create dialogs. To create a simple dialog, you can use the following code:

import React, { useState } from 'react';
import { Button, Dialog, DialogTitle, DialogContent, DialogActions } from '@material-ui/core';

const SimpleDialog = (props) => {
  const [isOpen, setIsOpen] = useState(false);

  return (
    <>
      <Button variant="contained" color="primary" onClick={() => setIsOpen(true)}>
        Open Dialog
      </Button>
      <Dialog open={isOpen} onClose={() => setIsOpen(false)}>
        <DialogTitle>Simple Dialog</DialogTitle>
        <DialogContent>
          <p>This is a simple dialog component from Material UI.</p>
        </DialogContent>
        <DialogActions>
          <Button variant="contained" onClick={() => setIsOpen(false)}>
            Cancel
          </Button>
          <Button variant="contained" color="primary" onClick={() => setIsOpen(false)}>
            Ok
          </Button>
        </DialogActions>
      </Dialog>
    </>
  );
};

The above code shows how to create a simple dialog component that displays a message and two buttons. We created a new component SimpleDialog that has a state variable isOpen that keeps track of whether the dialog is open or not. We display a button with the text “Open Dialog” that, when clicked, calls the setIsOpen method to open the dialog.

The Dialog component takes an open prop that is used to determine whether the dialog is visible or not. We pass isOpen to this open prop to open or close the dialog. We also passed an onClose prop to the Dialog component that sets isOpen to false when the user clicks the close button.

Customizing a Dialog

The next step is customizing the dialog. While the above code works well, it’s pretty basic. You can customize a dialog by changing its background color, adding an icon or image, and adjusting its text. You can also change the size of the dialog or the font used.

Let’s take an example where we want to display an alert message using a red background color. We can achieve this by adding a class to our dialog component and specifying some custom CSS. Here is the code:

import React, { useState } from 'react';
import { Button, Dialog, DialogTitle, DialogContent, DialogActions } from '@mui/material';
import { makeStyles } from '@mui/material';

const useStyles = makeStyles((theme) => ({
  alert: {
    backgroundColor: 'red',
    color: 'white',
  },
}));

const CustomizedDialog = (props) => {
  const [isOpen, setIsOpen] = useState(false);
  const classes = useStyles();

  return (
    <>
      <Button variant="contained" color="primary" onClick={() => setIsOpen(true)}>
        Open Dialog
      </Button>
      <Dialog
        open={isOpen}
        onClose={() => setIsOpen(false)}
        classes={{ paper: classes.alert }}
      >
        <DialogTitle>Alert</DialogTitle>
        <DialogContent>
          <p>This is an alert message.</p>
        </DialogContent>
        <DialogActions>
          <Button variant="contained" onClick={() => setIsOpen(false)}>
            Ok
          </Button>
        </DialogActions>
      </Dialog>
    </>
  );
};

In the above code, we created a new component CustomizedDialog that has a new useStyles hook. We used the makeStyles method to create a custom style for our dialog and gave it the class name alert. We then added the class to our Dialog component using the classes prop.

Handling User Actions in a Dialog

Dialogs are often used to capture user input or show a confirmation message. For example, you may want to ask the user if they’re sure they want to delete a file, or you may want to capture a user’s information in a registration form.

To handle user actions in a dialog, you need to make use of callbacks. Callbacks are functions that are passed as props to the component and executed when an event happens. In our dialog component, we can create a callback for when the user clicks the “Ok” button:

import React, { useState } from 'react';
import { Button, Dialog, DialogTitle, DialogContent, DialogActions } from '@mui/material';

const UserConfirmationModal = (props) => {
  const { isOpen, onClose, onConfirm } = props;

  return (
    <Dialog open={isOpen} onClose={onClose}>
      <DialogTitle>Are you sure?</DialogTitle>
      <DialogContent>
        <p>Are you sure you want to delete this item?</p>
      </DialogContent>
      <DialogActions>
        <Button variant="contained" onClick={onClose}>
          Cancel
        </Button>
        <Button variant="contained" color="primary" onClick={onConfirm}>
          Delete
        </Button>
      </DialogActions>
    </Dialog>
  );
};

export default UserConfirmationModal;

Notice how we passed two props to

the UserConfirmationModal component: onClose and onConfirm. These are callbacks that are executed when the user clicks the “Cancel” or “Delete” buttons respectively. In this scenario, onConfirm would likely include a function that deletes the selected item.

Dialogs with Forms

Dialogs can be used for many purposes, one of which is to capture user input with forms. Material UI makes it easy to create forms within dialogs by following similar patterns to regular forms. You can use text fields, select fields, and checkboxes as inputs in your form.

Here’s an example of how to use a form in a Material UI dialog:

import React, { useState } from 'react';
import { Button, Dialog, DialogTitle, DialogContent, DialogActions, TextField, Select, MenuItem } from '@mui/material';

const UserFormModal = (props) => {
  const { isOpen, onClose, onSubmit } = props;
  const [formState, setFormState] = useState({
    name: '',
    email: '',
    role: '',
  });

  const handleInputChange = (event) => {
    const { name, value } = event.target;
    setFormState({ ...formState, [name]: value });
  };

  const handleSubmit = (event) => {
    event.preventDefault();
    onSubmit(formState);
    onClose();
  };

  return (
    <Dialog open={isOpen} onClose={onClose}>
      <DialogTitle>Add User</DialogTitle>
      <DialogContent>
        <form onSubmit={handleSubmit}>
          <TextField
            label="Name"
            name="name"
            value={formState.name}
            onChange={handleInputChange}
            margin="dense"
            fullWidth
          />
          <TextField
            label="Email"
            name="email"
            value={formState.email}
            onChange={handleInputChange}
            margin="dense"
            fullWidth
          />
          <Select
            label="Role"
            name="role"
            value={formState.role}
            onChange={handleInputChange}
            margin="dense"
            fullWidth
          >
            <MenuItem value="Admin">Admin</MenuItem>
            <MenuItem value="Editor">Editor</MenuItem>
            <MenuItem value="User">User</MenuItem>
          </Select>
        </form>
      </DialogContent>
      <DialogActions>
        <Button variant="contained" onClick={onClose}>
          Cancel
        </Button>
        <Button variant="contained" color="primary" onClick={handleSubmit}>
          Create
        </Button>
      </DialogActions>
    </Dialog>
  );
};

export default UserFormModal;

In the above code, we created a component called UserFormModal that displays a form with text fields and a select field to capture user information. We also added callbacks for when the user submits the form data or cancels their action.

Dialog Transitions

Adding transitions to your dialogs can create a more professional and polished user interface. With Material UI, it’s easy to add transitions to your dialogs using CSS transitions.

Here’s an example of how to add a CSS transition to a Material UI dialog:

import React, { useState } from 'react';
import { Button, Dialog, DialogTitle, DialogContent, DialogActions, Slide } from '@mui/material';
import { makeStyles } from '@mui/material/styles';

const useStyles = makeStyles((theme) => ({
  dialog: {
    transition: 'opacity 200ms ease-in-out',
    '& .MuiDialog-paper': {
      opacity: 0,
    },
    '& .MuiDialog-paper.MuiDialog-paperVisible': {
      opacity: 1,
    },
  },
}));

const Transition = React.forwardRef(function Transition(props, ref) {
  return <Slide direction="up" ref={ref} {...props} />;
});

const TransitionedDialog = (props) => {
  const [isOpen, setIsOpen] = useState(false);
  const classes = useStyles();

  return (
    <>
      <Button variant="contained" color="primary" onClick={() => setIsOpen(true)}>
        Open Dialog
      </Button>
      <Dialog
        open={isOpen}
        onClose={() => setIsOpen(false)}
        TransitionComponent={Transition}
        classes={{ paper: classes.dialog }}
      >
        <DialogTitle>Transitioned Dialog</DialogTitle>
        <DialogContent>
          <p>This is a transitioned dialog component from Material UI.</p>
        </DialogContent>
        <DialogActions>
          <Button variant="contained" onClick={() => setIsOpen(false)}>
            Cancel
          </Button>
          <Button variant="contained" color="primary" onClick={() => setIsOpen(false)}>
            Ok
          </Button>
        </DialogActions>
      </Dialog>
    </>
  );
};

export default TransitionedDialog;

In the above code, we created a new component called TransitionedDialog that uses a CSS transition to fade in the dialog when it’s opened. We created a new hook useStyles to add a custom style class to our dialog component. We also added the Transition component from Material UI Library and used it as a TransitionComponent prop for the Dialog.

The TransitionComponent prop specifies the transition component to use for the dialog. In our case, we are using the Slide component for the transition. The classes prop is used to add a custom CSS class to the Dialog component. We defined a new class dialog that will handle the transition effect. With this, we can achieve our desired transition effect smoothly.

Conclusion

Dialogs are an essential component of any modern user interface. In Material UI, creating dialogs is easy, especially when you understand the different types of dialogs available and how to customize them. By following the examples in this article, you can easily create custom dialogs and give your application a seamless user interface.