How do I get access to the āNeedleā component from a React three fiber component?
Looking through the needle-engine.ts file it seems to be setting globalthis[āNeedleā] to a Context but if i try to use this to access the scene for example it comes in as null
Basically I want to get access to the component as described here so I can call the NT methods from React functions:
by user 563549194137239552
Youāre using the R3F template, is that right?
correct
by user 563549194137239552
The r3F template does not have a element in the HTML, it has a ārootā element so the instructions in the link I posted above do not apply.
by user 563549194137239552
@VRSpatialist do you have an example of an access pattern that youād like to use and that doesnāt work?
At the very least you should be able to copy the needle-react-three-fiber folder from Core\Editor\Projects\Templates\needle-react-three-fiber~ (and the corresponding NpmDef) and extend that as you need - inside NeedleScene.ts you have full access to the Context etc.
I think the question here is āhow and what should we expose from there to make it accessible from the outside as wellā - would love your input on that.
.
I think you can also use
import { Context } from "@needle-tools/engine"
and then
const needleContext = Context.Current
as long as you only have one instance of it
Iām not fussyā¦ I was trying not to copy and modify your stock source code but if I was going to modify anything it would probably be that component
by user 563549194137239552
I am currently trying to use the Context.Current as you showed aboveā¦ if that should work I will keep going down that pathā¦ i am probably trying to access it before it gets set up
by user 563549194137239552
This one I mean - if you copy this (in Explorer) and the accompanying folder and modify it, if you can come up with something you like happy to incorporate it back. Itās part of the Templates section because we thought it very likely that people may want/need to extend it
Iām importing Context from engine_setup ā¦ not engineā¦ but thatās probably what you meant
by user 563549194137239552
Thanks for the pointers! I should be able to figure something out with this info
by user 563549194137239552
Let me know how it goes!
I managed to clone the NeedleScene component and get it working with the ability to access the Needle component and get at the context and scene but in the end I decided R3F was more trouble than it was worth and didnāt bring much to the table since I need/want to do most of the logic in NT behaviours so I wonāt be using r3F for this project.
by user 563549194137239552
Feel free to still share your changes here, would be curious to see in which style you ended up exposing the context
Well the NeedleScene actually creates the context so itās pretty easy to access everything from there since it was created there. I didnāt really figure out a way to expose it - sending stuff IN to a react component seems straight forward but without āinstancesā I donāt know how to expose properties and methods generated inside a component to other bits that are just using that component and its probably bad practice as far as React philosphy is concerned.
I could deal with grabbing it from the global store ?globalThis[āNeedleā] but a lot of the trouble i had even when i could get access to the context was knowing when the scene was loaded and valid for example. React has that weird behaviour of getting called once to render, then only getting called again if you have useRef or other helpers in your component and browsers have that weird behaviour of re-fetching things when you click them in the debugger so i might log that the scene is empty but if i print the scene graph to the log by the time i go back to look at it itās no longer empty. Thatās not a you thing - itās just one more reason r3F is difficult to use.
Finally, the main the main parts of my app will need to live in the engine space and work with the engine components so there wasnāt going to be a lot of logic in R3F anyway.
Why did I use the r3F template in the first place? Bruno Simons made me do it! 
by user 563549194137239552
Haha, thatās a good reason!
Thanks for the additional details