Why You Should Use Wrapper Functions for Third-Party Libraries in JavaScript

When working on projects, it’s common to rely on third-party component libraries for basic functionalities like buttons, dropdowns, or form inputs. These libraries provide pre-built components that simplify development and save time.

Imagine you’ve built a large application that heavily uses a library’s functions, such as button(), radio(), or dropdown(), directly in your codebase. Everything works smoothly—until a major update is released. Suddenly, the button() function now requires an additional argument, theme, and there’s no fallback for the previous usage.

Now you’re faced with the daunting task of manually updating every single instance of the button() function to include the theme argument. Depending on the size of your codebase, this could mean hundreds or even thousands of changes.

This situation could have been avoided by using wrapper functions for these third-party utilities. A wrapper function is essentially a custom function that encapsulates the library’s function.

Instead of directly using the library’s function, like this:

import { button } from "third-party-library";

// Usage
button("Click Me");

You create a wrapper function:

// wrapper.js
import { button } from "third-party-library";

export function buttonWrapper(label, theme = "default") {
  return button(label, theme);
}

Then, you use the wrapper in your code:

import { buttonWrapper } from "./wrapper";

// Usage
buttonWrapper("Click Me");

Now, when the library updates its API, you only need to update the wrapper function—not every instance of the library’s function in your codebase.

For example, if the button() function changes again to require a third argument, you can simply update the wrapper:

export function buttonWrapper(label, theme = "default", size = "medium") {
  return button(label, theme, size);
}

Having a wrapper component will also come in handy when you want to switch the library.

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