Bridging the Gap: A Scalable Workflow for Figma and React with AWS Amplify



In modern front-end development, the handoff from design to development is often a source of friction. Designers meticulously craft pixel-perfect layouts in Figma, and developers are tasked with a manual, error-prone translation of that design into React components.

What if the design was the component? What if we could create a system that was not only fast to build but also incredibly resilient to design changes?

In this post, I'm breaking down the scalable, UI-first workflow we're using to connect Figma directly to our live React application using AWS Amplify.

The 4-Step Workflow: From Figma to React

Our process turns a static design into a fully functional, data-driven component in four steps.

Step 1: Design Components (in Figma) This all starts with the designer. They don't just draw pictures; they build reusable components with variants (e.g., a button with active and enabled states) and organize them in a library.

Step 2: Sync to Amplify Studio The designer uses the AWS Amplify plugin in Figma to "sync" their component library to Amplify Studio. Amplify's UI Library feature then automatically translates these Figma components into high-quality, human-readable React component files. These are, essentially, perfect "React blueprints" of the design.

Step 3: Pull Components (in React) As developers, we never have to write CSS for our layout again. We simply run one command in our terminal: amplify pull. This downloads all the generated React component files into our local project. These components are "static"—they look exactly like the Figma design, but they don't do anything... yet.

Step 4: The 'Overrides' Prop (Where Logic Meets Design) This is the most critical part. We never edit the generated component files. Why? Because we want to be able to run amplify pull again when the designer makes a change, without losing our work.

So how do we add data and logic? We use the overrides prop.

Think of this as a "control panel" on the outside of the generated component. From a parent component, we can pass instructions to "reach inside" the generated component and change anything. We can tell it:

  • "Find the text element named 'Description' and change its content."

  • "Find the button named 'HideButton' and attach this onClick function to it."

  • "Find the static 'Slider' component and replace it entirely (as) with this fully dynamic slider component I built."

The Problem: The "Giant Override Object"

This overrides pattern is powerful, but it leads to a new problem. Our parent component quickly becomes a massive, 100-line "instruction manual" full of nested overrides for sliders, descriptions, buttons, and more. It's impossible to read and maintain.

So, how do we use the generated template and keep our code clean?

The Solution: Separating Concerns with Custom Hooks

This is the key to our scalable workflow. Instead of one giant instruction manual, we create a separate custom hook (a special helper function) for each logical section of the component.

Our main parent component becomes clean and simple. It just:

  1. Calls a few helper hooks (e.g., useSliderOverrides, useDescriptionOverrides).

  2. Gets back small, specific sets of "override instructions" from each hook.

  3. Merges those instructions together.

  4. Passes the final, combined set of instructions to the main component.

All the "messy" logic is now perfectly isolated. The state for showing/hiding the description, along with all its nested override instructions, lives inside its own dedicated useDescriptionOverrides helper file.

Why This is a Game-Changer

  1. True Maintainability: The designer changes the font size of the "HideButton" in Figma. They sync. We run amplify pull. The generated component file is updated, and our onClick logic is completely untouched because it lives safely in our hook file. Nothing breaks.

  2. Clear Separation of Concerns: The generated component files handle the View (Look). Our hook files handle the Logic (Function).

  3. Developer Velocity: We can build and test features by focusing only on the logic, confident that the UI is a perfect 1:1 match with the design.

By treating the Figma design as the single source of truth for our UI, we've created a workflow that is not only fast but also incredibly resilient.

What's your team's design-to-dev workflow? I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to Create an AWS VPC From Scratch (Step-by-Step): A Guide to Public and Private Subnets

Image
Hello! If you're starting your journey with AWS, you've definitely heard the term "VPC." For many beginners, it can seem like a complex and intimidating topic. But in reality, a VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) is just the secure "foundation" for almost everything you'll ever build on AWS. In this article, I'll walk you through what a VPC is and how to build a secure one from scratch, step-by-step, using the AWS Console. What is a VPC? In the simplest terms, think of a VPC as your very own private, isolated piece of land in the AWS cloud. It's your personal network that no one else can access, and you have complete control over it. Why Do We Need Public and Private Subnets? Okay, so you have your piece of land (the VPC). Now, imagine you put your Application Server and your Database (like a secure safe) right in the middle of this open land. If you build a "main gate" (an Internet Gateway) and leave it open for users to come in, that means...
Read more

AWS Best Practice: Securely Connecting EC2 to RDS with Security Group Referencing

Image
Hello everyone! When connecting an EC2 application to an RDS database in AWS, using IP addresses or setting "Public Access" to 'Yes' is highly insecure. The real, professional-grade solution is to use Security Group Referencing inside a Custom VPC. In this article, I'll walk you through the exact, secure architecture we just built. Our Architecture: The Foundation (VPC): A custom private network named my-first-vpc . The Application (EC2): An EC2 instance launched with its own Security Group, my-server-sg , inside my-first-vpc . The Database (RDS): An RDS instance launched with its own separate Security Group, rds-sg , also inside my-first-vpc . The Secure Connection: We tell rds-sg , "You are only allowed to accept traffic that comes from my-server-sg ." Step 1: Launch the EC2 Instance & its Security Group First, let's set up our application server. Go to the EC2 service in the AWS Console - > "Launch instances". In the Netw...
Read more