The component system

Components are packages of template, style, behaviour and documentation. Components live in your application unless needed by multiple applications, then they are shared using the govuk_publishing_components gem. Legacy components live in static and are being deprecated.

Component guides

Components in applications are documented in component guides using the govuk_publishing_components gem. It mounts a component guide at the path /component-guide.

Find components in these guides:

• govuk_publishing_components component guide
• government-frontend component guide
• collections component guide
• finder-frontend component guide
• static component guide

Building components

A component must:

• meet the component principles
• follow component conventions

The govuk_publishing_components gem provides a generator to stub the files you’ll need in each component:

bundle exec rails generate govuk_publishing_components:component [component_name]

A lead paragraph component would be included in a template like this:

<%= render 'components/lead-paragraph', text: "A description is one or two leading sentences" %>