Styling (CSS)

Next Generation CSS

This boilerplate uses styled-components 💅 for styling react components. styled-components allows you to write actual CSS inside your JavaScript, enabling you to use the full power of CSS 💪 without mapping between styles and components. There are many ways to style react applications, but many find styled-components to be a more natural approach to styling components. Watch this video for a comparison and to see how it enforces best practices!

Styled-components: Enforcing best practices

Linting

To complement styled-components, this boilerplate also has a CSS linting setup. It uses stylelint which will help you stay consistent with modern CSS standards. Read about it here.

sanitize.css

In addition, this boilerplate also uses sanitize.css to make browsers render all elements more consistently and in line with modern standards, it's a modern alternative to CSS resets. More info available on the sanitize.css page.

CSS Support

We support and recommend the use of styled-components. We also support the use of CSS stylesheets.

There are many ways to style web applications, unfortunately, we cannot support them all. However, you can integrate the following by using the guides below:

styled-components

Below creates two styled react components (<Title>, <Wrapper>) and renders them as children of the <Header> component:

import React from 'react';
import styled from 'styled-components';
// Create a <Title> react component that renders an <h1> which is
// centered, palevioletred and sized at 1.5em
const Title = styled.h1`
font-size: 1.5em;
text-align: center;
color: palevioletred;
`;
// Create a <Wrapper> react component that renders a <section> with
// some padding and a papayawhip background
const Wrapper = styled.section`
padding: 4em;
background: papayawhip;
`;
// Use them like any other React component – except they're styled!
function Button() {
return (
<Wrapper>
<Title>
Hello {this.props.name}, this is your first styled component!
</Title>
...
</Wrapper>
);
}

(The CSS rules are automatically vendor prefixed, so you don't have to think about it!)

For more information about styled-components see https://github.com/styled-components/styled-components

Stylesheet

Webpack allows you to import more than JavaScript. Using the css-loader you can import CSS into a JavaScript:

Button.css

.danger {
background-color: red;
}

Button.js

import React from 'react';
import './Button.css'; // Tell Webpack that Button.js uses these styles
function Button() {
// You can use them as regular CSS styles
return <button className="danger">Click me</button>;
}

For more information about Stylesheets and the css-loader see https://github.com/webpack-contrib/css-loader

CSS Modules

Setup

Modify webpack.base.babel.js to look like:

{
test: /\.css$/,
exclude: /node_modules/,
- use: ['style-loader', 'css-loader'],
+ use: [
+ 'style-loader',
+ {
+ loader: 'css-loader',
+ options: {
+ modules: true,
+ },
+ },
+ ],
}

Usage

The syntax is very similar to using a Stylesheet and this often catches people out. The key difference in CSS Modules is that you import styles to a variable.

Button.css

.danger {
background-color: red;
}

Button.js

import React from 'react';
import styles from './Button.css'; // different import compared to stylesheets
function Button() {
// different usage to stylesheets
return <button className={styles.danger}>Click me</button>;
}

IMPORTANT: if you enable this rule, stylesheets will no longer work, it's one or the other unless you include or exclude specific directories.

For more information about CSS Modules see https://github.com/css-modules/css-modules

Sass

Setup

Install sass-loader and the node-sass dependancy.

npm i -D sass-loader node-sass

Modify webpack.base.babel.js to look like:

{
- test: /\.css$/,
+ test: /\.scss$/,
exclude: /node_modules/,
- use: ['style-loader', 'css-loader'],
+ use: ['style-loader', 'css-loader', 'sass-loader'],
}

Usage

Button.scss

$error-color: red;
.danger {
background-color: $error-color;
}

Button.js

import React from 'react';
import './Button.scss';
function Button() {
return <button className="danger">Click me</button>;
}

For more information about Sass and the sass-loader see https://github.com/webpack-contrib/sass-loader

LESS

Setup

Install less-loader and the less dependancy.

npm i -D less-loader less

Modify webpack.base.babel.js to look like:

{
- test: /\.css$/,
+ test: /\.less$/,
exclude: /node_modules/,
- use: ['style-loader', 'css-loader'],
+ use: [
+ 'style-loader',
+ {
+ loader: 'css-loader',
+ options: {
+ importLoaders: 1,
+ },
+ },
+ 'less-loader',
+],
}

Usage

Button.less

@error-color: red;
.danger {
background-color: @error-color;
}

Button.js

import React from 'react';
import './Button.less';
function Button() {
return <button className="danger">Click me</button>;
}

For more information about LESS and the less-loader see https://github.com/webpack-contrib/less-loader.

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