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Custom Pages

In as much as the power of Shesha is the ability to create application pages in a no-code manner, purely through configuration, there are times when you need to create a custom page. Custom pages allow you create a page using more traditional 'pro-code' based methods, namely as using React and TypeScript and are therefore unrestricted by the Shesha framework.

Next.js

The Shesha front-end framework is based on the very popular and powerful Next.js. The handling of custom pages is therefore all done by Next.js. If Next.js is not available in the packages, this feature will not work. Familiarity with Next.js is therefore also recommended.

Custom Pages vs Custom Components​

To avoid confusion, there is a difference between custom pages and custom components. Custom pages integrate our own logic into the entire page, while custom components integrate our own logic into components that may be placed onto configured pages using the Shesha form designer.

Implementation​

To create a custom page:

  1. Create a folder in the pages directory.

    • Navigate to the src folder and then to the pages folder (root -> src -> pages).
    • Create a folder with the name of the path you choose to use (e.g., a custom folder means /custom on the URL path).

  2. Once this folder has been created, it is suggested to create an index.tsx file inside the custom directory created. An illustration can be seen below (Figure 1: Folder Structure). A .tsx extension is used when embedding JSX elements inside the files, while .ts is used for plain TypeScript files that do not support adding JSX elements.

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Figure 2 shows a snippet of code that will be added in the index.tsx page. If a consistent layout is required, it can be set using Page.getLayout as seen in the illustration below.

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How to Access​

Adding a page to the Shesha boilerplate is the same as adding it to a Next.js application. If the developer is familiar with Next.js, it is the same with the Shesha boilerplate because the Shesha boilerplate uses Next.js to serve pages. This means that your Url will be suffixed by your folder name. E.g. https://shesha.io/custom or https://localhost:6006/custom

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