What are components in Ditto? Components are text items that are synced across projects and stored in the Component Library for your workspace. Edits to the text or meta-data of a component propagate to all of its instances.

Components allow you to:

• centralize your team’s copy into a searchable, standardized library
• reduce time spent manually copying + pasting edits to repeated text across screens
• allow designers to reuse pre-approved, standardized text in their mocks

When do I start creating components?

We've seen that teams get the most out of Ditto when they starting creating components as early as possible! You'll eventually want to componentize every piece of text in your projects as it will make that text a lot easier to reuse across projects, as well as connect to design and development.

https://www.loom.com/share/7fcdcbdf7dd549cb9749e8e4a94061d7?sid=b6a54885-f519-4b3d-b968-3011cf8e6d17

Some key terms to help you get started:

• Instance - an instance of a component is a text item currently attached to a component. Edits to an instance sync with all instances of the same component.
• Attaching - attaching a text item in a project to a component turns it into an instance of the component. A text item can be attached to either an existing component or a new component based on the current text.
• Detaching - detaching a text item unlinks the text item from the component. After detaching from a component, edits to the text item are no longer linked with the instances of the component.

<aside> 💡

Resource: Want to try out creating and attaching components in a low-stakes sandbox? Check out our 🌐Ditto Components Playground (Figma Community File)!

</aside>

Creating your first component

To create your first component, click a text item in a project and select "create or attach component" in the edit panel.

This will open a modal where you can name your new component (or attach it to existing components once you have others in the component library!). You can view all of the components in your workspace by clicking the "Components" tab at the top of the web-app.

Drafting Components

You can also draft Ditto Components in your Component Library, without having to create Components from existing text in Figma files! This means being able to create a content component library directly in Ditto that anyone from your team can bring into their projects.