react-chessboard

The React Chessboard Library used at ChessOpenings.co.uk

Inspired and adapted from the unmaintained chessboardjsx

What is react-chessboard?

react-chessboard is a React component that provides chessboard functionality to your application. The Chess game logic that controls the board should be independent to the board, using a library such as Chess.js. An example of these two working together is shown in the example below.

ChessOpenings.co.uk was originally built utilising the chessboardjsx library. With chessboardjsx being unmaintained, it made it difficult to add functionality or optimise performance, so react-chessboard was made.

Installation

npm i react-chessboard

Features

Current

• Board Orientation Choice
• Custom Actions
  • getPositionObject
  • onDragOverSquare
  • onMouseOutSquare
  • onMouseOverSquare
  • onPieceClick
  • onPieceDrop
  • onSquareClick
  • onSquareRightClick
• Customisable Board Styles
• Customisable Pieces
• Customisable Square Styles
• Drag and Drop
• Moving Piece Animations
• Optional Square Coordinates Notation
• Position Control
• Responsive Board Width

Planned

• Draw Arrows
• Promotion Piece Select
• Spare Pieces

Notes

• If more than one board is rendered and draggable on a low end device, performance will struggle due to performance issues with react-dnd.
• In the rare case that react-chessboard component is hot swapped out for another in its place, this will cause an issue with the CustomDragLayer. To prevent this, the react-chessboard component needs to be completely unmounted before being replaced. An example of how this can be achieved is shown in example/src/index.js.

Usage

Bare Minimum

import Chessboard from 'react-chessboard';

export default function App() {
  return (
    <div>
      <Chessboard id="BasicBoard" />
    </div>
  );
}

Basic Example

import { useState } from 'react';
import Chess from 'chess.js';
import Chessboard from 'react-chessboard';

export default function PlayRandomMoveEngine() {
  const [game, setGame] = useState(new Chess());

  function safeGameMutate(modify) {
    setGame((g) => {
      const update = { ...g };
      modify(update);
      return update;
    });
  }

  function makeRandomMove() {
    const possibleMoves = game.moves();
    if (game.game_over() || game.in_draw() || possibleMoves.length === 0) return; // exit if the game is over
    const randomIndex = Math.floor(Math.random() * possibleMoves.length);
    safeGameMutate((game) => {
      game.move(possibleMoves[randomIndex]);
    });
  }

  function onDrop(sourceSquare, targetSquare) {
    let move = null;
    safeGameMutate((game) => {
      move = game.move({
        from: sourceSquare,
        to: targetSquare,
        promotion: 'q' // always promote to a queen for example simplicity
      });
    });
    if (move === null) return; // illegal move
    setTimeout(makeRandomMove, 200);
  }

  return <Chessboard position={game.fen()} onPieceDrop={onDrop} />;
}

Advanced Examples

For more advanced examples, please see example boards show in example/src/boards.

Props

Prop	Default Value	Options	Description
animationDuration	number: 300		Time in milliseconds for piece to slide to target square. Only used when the position is programmatically changed. If a new position is set before the animation is complete, the board will cancel the current animation and snap to the new position.
arePiecesDraggable	boolean: true,	[true, false]	Whether or not all pieces are draggable.
boardOrientation	string: 'white',	['white', 'black']	The orientation of the board, the chosen colour will be at the bottom of the board.
boardWidth	number: 560,		The width of the board in pixels.
customBoardStyle	object: {},	inline CSS styling	Custom board style object e.g. { borderRadius: '5px', boxShadow: '0 5px 15px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5 '}.
customDarkSquareStyle	object: { backgroundColor: '#B58863' },	inline CSS styling	Custom dark square style object.
customDropSquareStyle	object: { boxShadow: 'inset 0 0 1px 6px rgba(255,255,255,0.75)' },	inline CSS styling	Custom drop square style object (Square being hovered over with dragged piece).
customLightSquareStyle	object: { backgroundColor: '#F0D9B5' },	inline CSS styling	Custom light square style object.
customPieces	object: {},		Custom pieces object where each key must match a corresponding chess piece (wP, wB, wN, wR, wQ, wK, bP, bB, bN, bR, bQ, bK). The value of each piece is a function that takes in some optional arguments to use and must return JSX to render. e.g. { wK: ({ isDragging: boolean, squareWidth: number, droppedPiece: string, targetSquare: string, sourceSquare: string }) => jsx }
customSquareStyles	object: {},	inline CSS styling	Custom styles for all squares.
id	number: 0	[string, number]	Board identifier, necessary if more than one board is mounted for drag and drop.
isDraggablePiece	function: ({ piece, sourceSquare }) => true,	returns [true, false]	Function called when a piece drag is attempted. Returns if piece is draggable.
getPositionObject	function: (currentPosition) => {},		User function that receives current position object when position changes.
onDragOverSquare	function: (square) => {},		User function that is run when piece is dragged over a square.
onMouseOutSquare	function: (square) => {},		User function that is run when mouse leaves a square.
onMouseOverSquare	function: (square) => {},		User function that is run when mouse is over a square.
onPieceClick	function: (piece) => {},		User function that is run when piece is clicked.
onPieceDrop	function: ({ sourceSquare, targetSquare, piece }) => {},		User function that is run when piece is dropped on a square.
onSquareClick	function: (square) => {},		User function that is run when a square is clicked.
onSquareRightClick	function: (square) => {},		User function that is run when a square is right clicked.
position	string: 'start',	['start', FEN string, { e5: 'wK', e4: 'wP', ... }]	FEN string or position object notating where the chess pieces are on the board. Start position can also be notated with the string: 'start'.
showBoardNotation	boolean: true	[true, false]	Whether or not to show the file and rank co-ordinates (a..h, 1..8)

Contributing

1. Fork this repository
2. Clone your forked repository onto your development machine git clone https://github.com/yourUsernameHere/react-chessboard.git cd react-chessboard
3. Create a branch for your PR git checkout -b your-branch-name
4. Set upstream remote git remote add upstream https://github.com/Clariity/react-chessboard.git
5. Make your changes
6. Test your changes using the examples folder npm run build cd examples npm start
7. Push your changes git add . git commit -m "feature/cool-new-feature" git push --set-upstream origin your-branch-name
8. Create pull request on GitHub
9. Contribute again git checkout main git pull upstream main git checkout -b your-new-branch-name

LICENSE

MIT