Simple and lightweight React WYSIWYG editor
npm install react-simple-wysiwygSimple and lightweight React WYSIWYG editor. Demo.

Key features:
- pretty small (~9kb, ~4kb gzipped)
- fast
- simple to configure
- simple to extend
- support automatic LTR and RTL text direction switching for Arabic languages
Of course, it's not so powerful as other complex editors. It DOES NOT:
- ✗ change HTML generated by a browser (sometimes it can be dirty)
- ✗ sanitize HTML (you can use sanitize-html)
- ✗ contain advanced features as others (like table editor, image editor and so on)
- ✗ support old browsers (IE 11 is minimal)
If you need a more powerful solution for React, you'd better take a look at more
powerful editors like Slate.js, Tiptap, CKEditor, TinyMCE, Quill or Summernote
and so on.
1. Install with npm:
npm install react-simple-wysiwyg
or CDN (unpkg.com)
2. Use the component
``jsx`
import { useState } from 'react';
import Editor from 'react-simple-wysiwyg';
function App() {
const [html, setHtml] = useState('my HTML');
function onChange(e) {
setHtml(e.target.value);
}
return (
);
}
$3
Generally, all props as well as a ref are passed to the content editable
element, which is a div element. It also supports a few additional properties
to act like an input element:
- autoFocus
- disabled for read-only mode
- name for onChange event
- placeholder
- tagName 'div' by default
- value
You can also set the root container props using containerProps property.
`tsx
import { useState } from 'react';
import Editor, {
BtnBold,
BtnItalic,
Toolbar
} from 'react-simple-wysiwyg';
export default function CustomEditor() {
const [value, setValue] = useState('simple text');
function onChange(e) {
setValue(e.target.value);
}
return (
);
}
`
Check DefaultEditor.tsx for details.
This library contains only a basic set of buttons, but it can be extended
easily. Check buttons.ts and
dropdowns.ts for example. Most of the buttons use
document.execCommand.
You can find a list of all available commands there. This API is deprecated,
but there is still no alternative and there are no plans to remove it from
browsers. Most of the popular WYSIWYG editors continue using it.
`tsx
import Editor, {
BtnBold,
BtnItalic,
createButton,
EditorProvider,
Toolbar
} from 'react-simple-wysiwyg';
const BtnAlignCenter = createButton('Align center', '≡', 'justifyCenter');
export default function CustomEditor({ value, onChange }) {
return (
);
}
`
By default, it fills the whole width of the parent element, and the height
depends on a content height. It could be customized easily. The root element
of the editor has rsw-editor css class, so you could use it in your styles.
Also, you can pass containerProps to customize editor appearance. Here's an
example how make the editor resizable:
`tsx`
value={html}
onChange={onChange}
/>
All css classes are consistent, so feel free to use these names in your css:
- rsw-editor (root container)rsw-ce
- (editable area)rsw-toolbar
- rsw-btn
- rsw-separator
- rsw-dd
- (drop down list)
Troubleshooting
RSW editor doesn't isolate its styles from the parent styles.
It's a pretty common case when you use a global reset or normalize styles which
remove bullets or numbers for lists.
To fix that, you should redefine these styles again:
`css
.rsw-ce ul {
list-style: disc;
padding-left: 2em;
}
.rsw-ce ol {
list-style: decimal;
padding-left: 2em;
}
``
#55. Also, it's a
good example of inserting a custom HTML element.
- Based on
lovasoa/react-contenteditable
- Uses Material Design Icons