Mobile v4 docs: UI component plugins

[shanerbaner82]

What

Documents how a plugin ships a new EDGE element type — a components block in nativephp.json wiring a PHP Element and Blade component to a Compose renderer and a SwiftUI renderer.

The capability is fully implemented (it's how nativephp/mobile-ui ships text, column, button…) and native:plugin:create scaffolds it end-to-end, but nothing in the v4 docs mentioned it. The plugins section covered only bridge functions and native capabilities; the manifest field table had no UI entry at all.

New page — plugins/ui-components.md (order 450)

• When to reach for a UI plugin vs. a composed nested component
• Scaffolding via native:plugin:create and the resulting package layout
• The components manifest block, its field table, and the validation it's subject to (missing type/element/blade, or both renderers, throws)
• The type → tag mapping — <native:my-widget> / <my-widget> go through the precompiler and require a snake_case type; dotted types are only reachable via the x-native- component form. Also: core types always win, so plugin types can't shadow column/text/pressable
• The Element contract — applyAttributes(), resolveProps() and callback-id registration, and the layout/style that arrive free from Tailwind parsing
• The NativeBladeComponent contract and keeping $isSelfClosing in sync with the manifest
• Both renderers, with the props accessors, node.children / NodeView, and the bridge event calls
• How registration is generated — element + Blade component at boot, PluginRendererRegistration.{kt,swift} at build, and the consequence: a new component needs a rebuild, not just a composer update
• Testing with Native::test() / assertElement()
• Closing section on the lighter path: shipping a composed NativeComponent from any Composer package via ComponentRegistry — no native code, no plugin

Cross-links

plugins/introduction (added UI components to "What Plugins Can Do"), plugins/creating-plugins (the scaffolder's type prompt), edge-components/introduction ("Building your own"), the-basics/nested-components.

Verification

Every code sample, class name, method signature, manifest field, and native API in the page was checked against nativephp/mobile and nativephp/mobile-ui source rather than written from memory.

DocumentationRenderingTest caught real escaping bugs in a first draft (<x-native-…> examples being compiled as Blade components); those are wrapped in @verbatim now. Docs tests pass, and the rendered page was inspected to confirm the tables and escaped tags come out right.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code