flipper/docs/setup/layout-plugin.md

id, title, sidebar_label

id	title	sidebar_label
layout-plugin	Layout Inspector Setup	Layout Inspector

To use the layout inspector plugin, you need to add the plugin to your Flipper client instance.

Android

Standard Android View Only

import com.facebook.flipper.plugins.inspector.DescriptorMapping;
import com.facebook.flipper.plugins.inspector.InspectorFlipperPlugin;

final DescriptorMapping descriptorMapping = DescriptorMapping.withDefaults();
client.addPlugin(new InspectorFlipperPlugin(mApplicationContext, descriptorMapping));

With Litho Support

Litho support is provided via an optional plugin.

You also need to compile in the litho-annotations package, as Flipper reflects on them at runtime. So ensure to not just include them as compileOnly in your gradle configuration:

dependencies {
  debugImplementation 'com.facebook.flipper:flipper-litho-plugin:0.27.0'
  debugImplementation 'com.facebook.litho:litho-annotations:0.19.0'
  // ...
}

If you want to enable Litho support in the layout inspector, you need to augment the descriptor with Litho-specific settings and add some addition dependencies.

import com.facebook.litho.config.ComponentsConfiguration;
import com.facebook.flipper.plugins.inspector.DescriptorMapping;
import com.facebook.flipper.plugins.inspector.InspectorFlipperPlugin;
import com.facebook.flipper.plugins.litho.LithoFlipperDescriptors;

// Instead of hard-coding this setting, it's a good practice to tie
// this to a BuildConfig flag, that you only enable for debug builds
// of your application.
ComponentsConfiguration.isDebugModeEnabled = true;

final DescriptorMapping descriptorMapping = DescriptorMapping.withDefaults();
// This adds Litho capabilities to the layout inspector.
LithoFlipperDescriptors.add(descriptorMapping);

client.addPlugin(new InspectorFlipperPlugin(mApplicationContext, descriptorMapping));

Blocking fullscreen views (Android only)

The issue is that if you have some view that occupies big part of the screen but draws nothing and its Z-position is higher than your main content, then selecting view/component through Layout Inspector doesn't work as you intended, as it will always hit that transparent view and you need to manually navigate to the view you need which is time-consuming and should not be necessary.

Add the following tag to your view to skip it from Flipper's view picker. The view will still be shown in the layout hierarchy, but it will not be selected while using the view picker.

view.setTag(R.id.flipper_skip_view_traversal, true);

iOS

Standard UIView Only

To debug layout using Flipper, add the following pod:

pod 'FlipperKit/FlipperKitLayoutPlugin', '~>' + flipperkit_version

Once you have added the pod, initialise the plugin and add it to the FlipperClient as follows.

#import <FlipperKitLayoutPlugin/FlipperKitLayoutPlugin.h>

SKDescriptorMapper *mapper = [[SKDescriptorMapper alloc] initWithDefaults];
[client addPlugin:[[FlipperKitLayoutPlugin alloc] initWithRootNode:context.application withDescriptorMapper:mapper]];

import FlipperKit

let layoutDescriptorMapper = SKDescriptorMapper(defaults: ())
client?.add(FlipperKitLayoutPlugin(rootNode: application, with: layoutDescriptorMapper!))

With ComponentKit Support

If you want to enable ComponentKit support in the layout inspector, you need to add FlipperKit/FlipperKitLayoutComponentKitSupport to your Podfile.

pod 'FlipperKit/FlipperKitLayoutComponentKitSupport', '~>' + flipperkit_version

Once you have added the pod you will then need to augment the descriptor with Componentkit-specific settings as shown below.

#import <FlipperKitLayoutPlugin/FlipperKitLayoutPlugin.h>
#import <FlipperKitLayoutComponentKitSupport/FlipperKitLayoutComponentKitSupport.h>

SKDescriptorMapper *layoutDescriptorMapper = [[SKDescriptorMapper alloc] initWithDefaults];
[FlipperKitLayoutComponentKitSupport setUpWithDescriptorMapper: layoutDescriptorMapper];
[client addPlugin: [[FlipperKitLayoutPlugin alloc] initWithRootNode: application
                                           withDescriptorMapper: layoutDescriptorMapper]];

import FlipperKit

let layoutDescriptorMapper = SKDescriptorMapper(defaults: ())
FlipperKitLayoutComponentKitSupport.setUpWith(layoutDescriptorMapper)

client?.add(FlipperKitLayoutPlugin(rootNode: application, with: layoutDescriptorMapper!))