Content Creators
UI Button events

UI Button events

To make a button in your UI, create a Button UI element. The button must have the following:

  • value: A string with the text to display on the button.

It can also have:

  • onMouseDown: A callback function that runs every time the user pushes the pointer button on the entity.
    📔 Note: To click on a UI component, players must first unlock the cursor from the view control. They do this by pressing the right mouse button and keeping it pressed, or by hitting Esc.
  • onMouseUp: A similar callback function that runs every the pointer button is raised while pointing at the entity. This could be used for example to build a drag-and-drop mechanic on your UI.
  • variant: Use this property to set the style of the button as one of the defaults. primary and secondary are available.
  • disabled: Boolean to set a button disabled. When disabled is set to true, the onMouseDown and onMouseUp actions are no longer called. Also the apha value of the color of both the text and the backgroun is halved, so the button is “grayed-out” and stands out less.
  • color: Background color of the button.
  • font: Font of the text on the button.
  • textAlign: Alignment of the text inside the button
  • uiTransform: Positioning properties of the UI element.

The following example shows how to create a clickable UI button.

import { ReactEcsRenderer } from '@dcl/sdk/react-ecs'

ReactEcsRenderer.setUiRenderer(() => (
  <Button
    value="Click me"
    variant="primary"
    uiTransform={{ width: 100, height: 100 }}
    onMouseDown={() => {
      console.log('Clicked on the UI')
    }}
  />
))

You can also write the function that is executed by the click outside the UI definition, and reference it by name. This helps keep the UI code more readable, and is also useful if multiple clickable UI entities need to call the same function.

function handleClick() {
  // Do something onClick
  console.log('Clicked on the UI')
}
ReactEcsRenderer.setUiRenderer(() => (
  <Button
    value="Click me"
    uiTransform={{ width: 100 }}
    onMouseDown={{ handleClick }}
  />
))

Button styling #

Set the variant to primary or secondary to take advantage of the default styling options for buttons. primary makes your button red with white text, secondary makes your button white with red text.

import { ReactEcsRenderer } from '@dcl/sdk/react-ecs'

ReactEcsRenderer.setUiRenderer(() => (
  <UiEntity
    uiTransform={{
      width: 500,
      height: 230,
      margin: '16px 0 8px 270px',
      padding: 4,
      alignSelf: 'center',
    }}
    uiBackground={{ color: Color4.Gray() }}
  >
    <Button
      value="Click Me"
      variant="primary"
      uiTransform={{ width: 80, height: 20, margin: 4 }}
      onMouseDown={() => {
        console.log('Clicked on the UI')
      }}
    />
    <Button
      value="Click Me"
      variant="secondary"
      uiTransform={{ width: 80, height: 20, margin: 4 }}
      onMouseDown={() => {
        console.log('Clicked on the UI')
      }}
    />
  </UiEntity>
))

You’re also free to use all of the properties on background freely. You can also set a variant and then override some of its properties.

Making other elements clickable #

Any element in the UI can be made clickable by adding an onMouseDown property to it, it works identically to a button. The following example adds onMouseDown properties to background images and text.

import { ReactEcsRenderer } from '@dcl/sdk/react-ecs'

ReactEcsRenderer.setUiRenderer(() => (
  <UiEntity
    onMouseDown={() => {
      console.log('Background clicked!')
    }}
    uiTransform={{
      width: 400,
      height: 230,
    }}
    uiBackground={{ color: Color4.create(0.5, 0.8, 0.1, 0.6) }}
  >
    <Label
      onMouseDown={() => {
        console.log('Label clicked!')
      }}
      value={`Player: ${getPlayerPosition()}`}
      fontSize={18}
      uiTransform={{ width: '100%', height: 30 }}
    />
  </UiEntity>
))

Pointer blocking #

All UI entities are non-pointer blocking by default. If an entity has an onMouseDown, then it becomes pointer blocking.

You can change this default behavior by changing the value of the pointerFilter property on the uiTransform component on any UI entity. For example to set an entity that has no onMouseDown to be pointer blocking.

The supported values for pointerFilter are:

  • block: The UI element is pointer blocking, players can’t click on anything behind this UI element.
  • none: The UI element is non-pointer blocking. The element is not clickable and anything behind it can be clicked.