Render React component for Highcharts tooltip

README.md

This is an example of how to render React component for Highcharts tooltip using React portals. See Chart.tsx and Tooltip.tsx files below. Latest Highcharts version is required for the example to work correctly (9.0.0 at the time of writting).

Codesandbox: https://codesandbox.io/s/highcharts-react-tooltip-ut1uy

Chart.tsx

import React, { useState, useCallback } from "react";
import Highcharts, { Chart as HighchartsChart } from "highcharts";
import HighchartsReact from "highcharts-react-official";
import { Tooltip } from "./Tooltip";

const options = {
  title: {
    text: "Custom tooltip as React component"
  },
  series: [
    {
      type: "line",
      data: [1, 2, 3]
    }
  ],
  tooltip: {
    style: {
      pointerEvents: "auto"
    }
  }
};

export const Chart = () => {
  const [chart, setChart] = useState<HighchartsChart | null>(null);
  const callback = useCallback((chart: HighchartsChart) => {
    setChart(chart);
  }, []);

  return (
    <>
      <HighchartsReact
        highcharts={Highcharts}
        options={options}
        callback={callback}
      />

      <Tooltip chart={chart}>
        {(formatterContext) => {
          const { x, y } = formatterContext;
          return (
            <>
              <div>x: {x}</div>
              <div>y: {y}</div>
              <br />
              <button onClick={() => alert(`x: ${x}, y: ${y}`)}>Action</button>
            </>
          );
        }}
      </Tooltip>
    </>
  );
};

Tooltip.tsx

import {
  Chart,
  TooltipFormatterCallbackFunction,
  TooltipFormatterContextObject
} from "highcharts";
import { useEffect, useState, useRef } from "react";
import ReactDOM from "react-dom";

const generateTooltipId = (chartId: number) =>
  `highcharts-custom-tooltip-${chartId}`;

interface Props {
  chart: Chart | null;
  children(formatterContext: TooltipFormatterContextObject): JSX.Element;
}

export const Tooltip = ({ chart, children }: Props) => {
  const isInit = useRef(false);
  const [context, setContext] = useState<TooltipFormatterContextObject | null>(
    null
  );

  useEffect(() => {
    if (chart) {
      const formatter: TooltipFormatterCallbackFunction = function () {
        // Ensures that tooltip DOM container is rendered before React portal is created.
        if (!isInit.current) {
          isInit.current = true;

          // TODO: Is there a better way to create tooltip DOM container?
          chart.tooltip.refresh.apply(chart.tooltip, [this.point]);
          chart.tooltip.hide(0);
        }

        setContext(this);

        return `<div id="${generateTooltipId(chart.index)}"></div>`;
      };

      chart.update({
        tooltip: {
          formatter,
          useHTML: true
        }
      });
    }
  }, [chart]);

  const node = chart && document.getElementById(generateTooltipId(chart.index));

  return node && context
    ? ReactDOM.createPortal(children(context), node)
    : null;
};

@borglin I've also used this gist as a way of being able to render complex React components inside a highcharts tooltip, and I think i was able to make a fairly decent solution for the height problem. I realized that the SVG container rendered by highcharts that was having a static height, and the solution I found was to just set opacity: 0 on the options.tooltip.style, and instead make a custom TooltipContainer component that wraps the content of the Tooltips. Hope this could help anyone with similar issues.

BTW: Also noticed that the error that is thrown from tooltip.refresh function went away after upgrading to Highcharts 11. Here is an updated sandbox:

https://codesandbox.io/s/highcharts-react-tooltip-forked-s6xyqc?file=/src/TooltipContainer.tsx

Thanks @knutmarius - great solution!

I think this addresses @danimaxi54 question too.

Small update: As I was trying to roll out this solution to all our charts, I hit a roadblock when I came to some gannt charts that were having <ReactHighcharts immutable={true} ... /> . When the immutable flag is set to true, it crashes inside highcharts when the tooltip tries to do chart.update(..)to set the formatter function. However, I cannot replicate this in the sandbox, but it's very reproducable with all the charts in my application. Not sure why it acts differently from the sandbox. If the chart is rendered as immutable it crashes. Is this something that you have experienced before?

I started thinking about a solution that would not involve using chart.update, but rather set the formatter function on the chart options object at initialization, but then the rapid updating of the context in state causes the entire chart to rerender as well, so that would need to be solved. Is this a solution you have considered as well?