@dr.pogodin/babel-preset-svgr

Babel Preset SVGR

SVGR is the most popular library for inclusion of SVG graphics into React applications (~1.8M weekly downloads). It provides SVGR Webpack loader, Node API, and CLI tool, but there was no way before to use it with Babel (see https://github.com/smooth-code/svgr/issues/306, https://github.com/smooth-code/svgr/issues/252).

This preset provides the way to transform SVG files into React components with SVGR and Babel. It works with any Babel setup (Babel CLI, @babel/node, @babel/register, Webpack babel-loader). If you use Hot Module Reloading in React, SVGs processed with this preset are correctly reloaded when changed.

Content

• Setup
• Under the hood
• Compatibility with Create React App

Setup

1. Install the preset npm install --save-dev @dr.pogodin/babel-preset-svgr (depending on your setup, you may need to use --save flag to save it as a regular dependency, rather than a development one).

2. Adds the preset to your Babel config, e.g.

   {
     "presets": [
       "@babel/env",
       "@babel/react",
       "@dr.pogodin/babel-preset-svgr"
     ]
   }
   

3. Instruct Babel to transform SVG files.

   • If you use Webpack and babel-loader, add SVG rule inside Webpack config as:

     module.exports = {
       module: {
         rules: [{
           test: /\.(jsx?|svg)$/
           exclude: [/node_modules/],
           loader: 'babel-loader',
           options: {
             /* babel-loader options */
           }
         }]
       }
     }
     

     With such setup you don't need to use @svgr/webpack loader for SVG files, Babel will take care about everything.

   • If you use @babel/node, or @babel/register you need to add .svg into their extensions option. For @babel/node use the flag --extensions '.js','.jsx','.svg', for @babel/register use extensions: ['.js', '.jsx', '.svg'] array inside the options object.

   • If you use Babel CLI and specify individual file(s) to compile, it will work out of the box for SVGs. If you use it to compile entire directories you'll need a dedicated compilation pass for SVG files with the flags --extensions '.svg' --keep-file-extensions. In this dedicated pass Babel will only compile SVG assets, and it will keep their extensions. In a separate pass you'll compile JS(X) files as usual. The dedicated pass is necessary, as Babel currently either replaces all output file extensions to .js, or keeps all original ones. In our case we need to keep .svg extensions only.

Under the Hood

This preset wraps the standard Babel parser into a simple logic that checks for .svg extensions of input, and if met, it runs input code through SVGR before passing it to the Babel parser. For other file types it just passes the code into Babel parser directly.

If your project already depends on a customized Babel parser, you can pass its path into parser option of this preset. It will require() and use your parser then.

You also can pass in custom SVGR options via svgr field.

Example of options usage:

{
  "presets": [
    "@babel/env",
    "@babel/react",
    ["@dr.pogodin/babel-preset-svgr", {
      "parser": "custom-babel-parser",
      "mimicCreateReactApp": true,
      "svgr": {
        "plugins": []
      }
    }]
  ]
}

Compatibility with Create React App

Create React App set ups webpack to transform SVG components in the following way:

• The react component itself is exported as ReactComponent named export.
• The original SVG path is exported as the default export.

Thus, the users export SVG assets like:

import originalPath, { ReactComponent } from './asset.svg';

This preset mimics such behavior when mimicCreateReactApp option is set:

{
  "presets": [
    "@babel/env",
    "@babel/react",
    ["@dr.pogodin/babel-preset-svgr", {
      "mimicCreateReactApp": true
    }]
  ]
}