Set up Storybook for React Projects

This guide will walk you through setting up Storybook for React projects in your Nx workspace.

Set up Storybook in your workspace

You first need to set up Storybook for your Nx workspace, if you haven't already. You can read the Storybook plugin overview guide to get started.

Generate Storybook Configuration for a React project

You can generate Storybook configuration for an individual React project with this command:

nx g @nrwl/react:storybook-configuration project-name

Nx React Storybook Preset

@nrwl/react ships with a Storybook addon to make sure it uses the very same configuration as your Nx React application. When you generate a Storybook configuration for a project, it'll automatically add the addon to your configuration.

module.exports = {
  ...
  addons: ['@storybook/addon-essentials', ..., '@nrwl/react/plugins/storybook'],
  ...
};

Auto-generate Stories

The @nrwl/react:storybook-configuration generator has the option to automatically generate *.stories.ts files for each component declared in the library. The stories will be generated using Component Story Format 3 (CSF3).

<some-folder>/
├── my.component.ts
└── my.component.stories.ts

You can re-run it at a later point using the following command:

nx g @nrwl/react:stories --project=<project-name>

Example

Let's take for a example a library in your workspace, under libs/feature/ui, called feature-ui. This library contains a component, called my-button.

The command to generate stories for that library would be:

nx g @nrwl/react:stories --project=feature-ui

and the result would be the following:

<workspace name>/
├── apps/
├── libs/
│   ├── feature/
│   │   ├── ui/
|   |   |   ├── .storybook/
|   |   |   ├── src/
|   |   |   |   ├──lib
|   |   |   |   |   ├──my-button
|   |   |   |   |   |   ├── my-button.component.ts
|   |   |   |   |   |   ├── my-button.component.stories.ts
|   |   |   |   |   |   └── etc...
|   |   |   |   |   └── etc...
|   |   |   ├── README.md
|   |   |   ├── tsconfig.json
|   |   |   └── etc...
|   |   └── etc...
|   └── etc...
├── nx.json
├── package.json
├── README.md
└── etc...

Cypress tests for Stories

The storybook-configuration generator gives the option to set up an e2e Cypress app that is configured to run against the project's Storybook instance.

To launch Storybook and run the Cypress tests against the iframe inside of Storybook:

nx run project-name-e2e:e2e

The url that Cypress points to should look like this:

'/iframe.html?id=buttoncomponent--primary&args=text:Click+me!;padding;style:default'

buttoncomponent is a lowercase version of the Title in the *.stories.ts file.
primary is the name of an individual story.
style=default sets the style arg to a value of default.

Changing args in the url query parameters allows your Cypress tests to test different configurations of your component. You can read the documentation for more information.

Example Files

Let's take for a example a library in your workspace, under libs/feature/ui, called feature-ui with a component, called my-button.

Story file

The Storybook configuration generator would generate a Story file that looks like this:

libs/feature/ui/src/lib/my-button/my-button.stories.tsx
import type { Meta } from '@storybook/react';
import { MyButton } from './my-button';

const Story: Meta<typeof MyButton> = {
  component: MyButton,
  title: 'MyButton',
};
export default Story;

export const Primary = {
  args: {
    text: 'Click me!',
    padding: 0,
    style: 'default',
  },
};

Cypress test file

For the library described above, Nx would generate an E2E project called feature-ui-e2e with a Cypress test file that looks like this:

apps/feature-ui-e2e/src/e2e/my-button/my-button.cy.ts
describe('feature-ui: MyButton component', () => {
  beforeEach(() =>
    cy.visit(
      '/iframe.html?id=mybutton--primary&args=text:Click+me!;padding;style:default'
    )
  );

  it('should contain the right text', () => {
    cy.get('button').should('contain', 'Click me!');
  });
});

Depending on your Cypress version, the file will end with .spec.ts or .cy.ts.