In this article, I will guide you step by step to set up Storybook with Next, Typescript, SCSS, and Jest.

Storybook is an open-source tool for developing UI components in isolation. It makes building stunning UIs organized and efficient. However, it can be quite tricky to set up with Nextjs.

Requirements

• Node.js 10.13 or later
• MacOS, Windows (including WSL), and Linux are supported

Create Nextjs App

Create a new Next.js app using create-next-app, which sets up everything automatically for you. To create a project, run this command:

$ npx create-next-app
✔ What is your project named? … my-app
✔ Pick a template › Default starter app

• Enter your project name + hit return
• You will be asked to choose a template: Use arrow key ⬇ to choose a Default starter app and hit return

After the installation is complete, to start the development server:

cd my-app
yarn run dev

You should see this page on localhost:3000

TypeScript

Next, let’s configure Typescript for our Next app

$ yarn add -D typescript @types/react @types/node

Create a tsconfig.json in the root folder — this is where you will put your typescript configurations.

/* root folder */
$ touch tsconfig.json

And add the following config to the file:

Remove index.js and create index.tsx file. You can do it manually or use these commands in the root folder

/* root folder */
rm -f pages/index.js
touch pages/index.tsx

Add the following to index.tsx:

Restart your server and check out your http://localhost:3000/ by running:

$ yarn run dev

Storybook

Next, we’ll configure Nextjs, SCSS, and Typescript for Storybook

$ yarn add -D @storybook/react @storybook/preset-typescript

Create .storybook folder and storybook config files:

/* root folder */
mkdir .storybook
cd .storybook
touch .storybook/main.js .storybook/next-preset.js .storybook/preview.js

Now we will go over how to configure these files.

next-preset.js

In this file, we will configure Typescript and SCSS to work with Storybook

$ yarn add -D sass style-loader css-loader sass-loader @babel/core babel-loader babel-preset-react-app

Add the following configuration to next-preset.js

SCSS

Create your style folder in the root and add global scss file.

/* root folder */
mkdir styles
touch styles/global.scss

preview.js

In this file, we configure the “preview” iframe that renders your components. We will import your global scss file here.

main.js

main.js is the most important config file. This is where we place the main configuration of Storybook.

Create a story

Let’s create a simple Button component and a story to test our Storybook setup. First, create a components folder and 2 files Button.tsx and Button.stories.tsx in the folder.

/* root folder*/
mkdir components
touch components/Button.tsx components/Button.stories.tsx

Then, add the following contents into 2 files:

Finally, add npm script to package.json to start storybook.

{
  ...
  "scripts": {
    "dev": "next dev",
    "build": "next build",
    "start": "next start",
    "storybook": "start-storybook -p 6006 -c .storybook"
  }
}

Now, let’s run our Storybook.

$ yarn storybook

You should see our global scss style took affect and 2 stories that we have created earlier to test the Button.

Jest

Next, we will add unit tests and snapshot tests in Jest for testing components in Nextjs and Typescript.

First, let’s install these development dependencies for Jest.

$ yarn add -D jest @types/jest ts-jest babel-jest @types/enzyme enzyme enzyme-adapter-react-16

We’ll need to configure Enzyme to use the adapter, which we can do in Jest’s bootstrap file. Let’s create a config folder and place the setup file in there.

/* root folder */
mkdir config
touch config/setup.js

This code will run also before each test but after the testing framework gets executed:

Now let’s create a config file for jest. If you place your setup file above at a different location then make sure to change your setupFiles: […] in jest.config.js.

/* root folder */
$ touch jest.config.js

Config babel.config.json

Lastly, we will add babel configurations. Let’s add these dev dependencies to our package.json by running the following command:

yarn add -D @babel/preset-env @babel/preset-react @babel/preset-flow @babel/plugin-transform-runtime babel-plugin-transform-es2015-modules-commonjs

In the root folder, create a babel config file. For some reasons, babel.rc does not work and I have to replace it with babel.config.json

/* root folder */
$ touch babel.config.json

Let’s create a test

Now, let’s run a simple unit test to test the index file that we created earlier to make sure that it has the welcome message “Welcome to My Next App!” as a “h1” element.

First, create a __test__ folder to keep our test files in one place and create index.test.tsx file.

/* root folder */
mkdir components/__test__
touch components/__test__/index.test.tsx

Snapshot testing

Finally, I will show you how to create a simple snapshot test. We use Snapshot testing to keep a copy of the structure of the UI component or a snapshot so when after we make any changes we can review the changes and update the snapshots. You can read more about Snapshot testing here.

To start, let’s install react-test-renderer, a library that enables you to render React components as JavaScript objects without the need for a DOM.

$ yarn add -D react-test-renderer

Now, create a file called Button.snapshot.test.tsx to test create new snapshots for the Button component.

$ touch components/__test__/Button.snapshot.test.tsx

Now, add the add npm script to package.json to run your tests

{
  ...
  "scripts": {
    ...
    "test": "jest",
    "test:watch": "jest --watch",
    "test:coverage": "jest --coverage"
  }
}

Go ahead and run your tests.

$ yarn run test

You should see 1 unit test and 1 snapshot test are passed

If you run into errors such as “The default export is not a React Component in page: ‘/’” or “ReferenceError: regeneratorRuntime is not defined”, try to delete package-lock.json, node_modules folder, and .next folder and then restart your server, storybook and rerun your test again.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading 🙏🏻 and let me know in the comment if you run into any problems and if it's helpful for you.

You can also clone the source code here to get started on your development right away: https://github.com/trinwin/storybook-next-ts-template

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