Self-hosting TinyMCE in React

This guide shows how to self-host TinyMCE in a React application using the TinyMCE React component.

Prerequisites

This procedure requires Node.js (and NPM).

Procedure

  1. Use Vite and React SWC to create a new React project named tinymce-react-demo.

    # NPM 7+, extra double-dash is needed
npm create vite@5 tinymce-react-demo -- --template react-swc

  2. Go to the project directory and install @tinymce/tinymce-react

    cd tinymce-react-demo && npm install @tinymce/tinymce-react

  3. Install the tinymce package.

    npm install tinymce

  4. Install fs-extra as a development dependency:

    npm install -D fs-extra

  5. Setup a postinstall script to copy TinyMCE to public directory, which automatically makes TinyMCE and other components available as static assets after each installation.

    Add postinstall.js file.
    import fse from 'fs-extra';
import path from 'path';

const topDir = import.meta.dirname;
fse.emptyDirSync(path.join(topDir, 'public', 'tinymce'));
fse.copySync(path.join(topDir, 'node_modules', 'tinymce'), path.join(topDir, 'public', 'tinymce'), { overwrite: true });
    Update postinstall target in package.json to run the postinstall.js script.
    {
  // ... other content omitted for brevity ...
  "scripts": {
    // ... other scripts omitted for brevity ...
    "postinstall": "node ./postinstall.js"
  }
}

  6. Exclude public/tinymce from Git tracking

    # ... other rules omitted for brevity ...
/public/tinymce/

  7. In this instance, run the postinstall to copy TinyMCE to the public directory.

    npm run postinstall

  8. Update App.jsx to include Editor component. Note: tinymceSrcScript references to the public tinymce using absolute root path.

    import { useRef } from 'react';
import { Editor } from '@tinymce/tinymce-react';
import './App.css';

export default function App() {
  const editorRef = useRef(null);
  const log = () => {
    if (editorRef.current) {
      console.log(editorRef.current.getContent());
    }
  };
  return (
    <>
      <Editor
        tinymceScriptSrc='/tinymce/tinymce.min.js'
        licenseKey='gpl'
        onInit={(_evt, editor) => editorRef.current = editor}
        initialValue='<p>This is the initial content of the editor.</p>'
        init={{
            height: 500,
            menubar: false,
            plugins: [
              'advlist', 'autolink', 'lists', 'link', 'image', 'charmap',
              'anchor', 'searchreplace', 'visualblocks', 'code', 'fullscreen',
              'insertdatetime', 'media', 'table', 'preview', 'help', 'wordcount'
            ],
            toolbar: 'undo redo | blocks | ' +
              'bold italic forecolor | alignleft aligncenter ' +
              'alignright alignjustify | bullist numlist outdent indent | ' +
              'removeformat | help',
            content_style: 'body { font-family:Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px }'
        }}
      />
      <button onClick={log}>Log editor content</button>
    </>
  );
}

  9. Run the development server to test the application:

    npm run dev

Other resources