aesthetic

Aesthetic v0.3.0

Aesthetic is a powerful React library for styling components, whether it be CSS-in-JS using objects, importing stylesheets, or simply referencing external class names. Simply put, Aesthetic is an abstraction layer that utilizes higher-order-components for the compilation of styles via third-party libraries, all the while providing customizability, theming, and a unified syntax.

import React, { PropTypes } from 'react';
import { classes, ClassNamesPropType } from 'aesthetic';
import style from '../path/to/styler';

class Carousel extends React.Component {
  static propTypes = {
    children: PropTypes.node,
    classNames: ClassNamesPropType,
  };

  // ...

  render() {
    const { children, classNames } = this.props;
    const { animating } = this.state;

    return (
      <div
        role="tablist"
        className={classes({
          classNames.carousel,
          animating && classNames.carousel__animating,
        })}
      >
        <ul className={classNames.list}>
          {children}
        </ul>

        <button
          type="button"
          onClick={this.handlePrev}
          className={classes(classNames.button, classNames.prev)}
        >
          ←
        </button>

        <button
          type="button"
          onClick={this.handleNext}
          className={classes(classNames.button, classNames.next)}
        >
          →
        </button>
      </div>
    );
  }
}

export default style({
  carousel: {
    position: 'relative',
    maxWidth: '100%',
    // ...
  },
  carousel__animating: { ... },
  list: { ... },
  button: { ... },
  prev: { ... },
  next: { ... },
})(Carousel);

Aesthetic was built for the sole purpose of solving the following scenarios, most of which competing styling libraries fail to solve.

Multiple styling patterns

Want to use external CSS or Sass files? Or maybe CSS modules? Or perhaps CSS-in-JS? What about JSS instead of Aphrodite? All of these patterns and choices are supported through the use of adapters. However, inline styles are not supported as we prefer the more performant option of compiling styles and attaching them to the DOM.

Styling third-party libraries

Using a third-party provided UI component library has the unintended side-effect of hard-coded and non-customizable styles. Aesthetic solves this by allowing consumers to extend and inherit styles from the provided base component.

Installation

Aesthetic requires React as a peer dependency.

npm install aesthetic react --save
// Or
yarn add aesthetic react

Documentation

• Initial Setup
  • Webpack
  • Browserify
• Style Adapters
• Creating A Styler
• Defining Components
  • Customizing Styles
  • Combining Classes
• Styling Components
  • External Classes
  • Style Objects
  • Style Functions
• Theming Components
  • Using Theme Styles
  • Activating Themes
• Unified Syntax
  • Properties
  • Pseudos
  • Fallbacks
  • Media Queries
  • Font Faces
  • Animations
  • Selectors
• Competitors Comparison
  • Features
  • Adapters

Initial Setup

Aesthetic makes heavy use of process.env.NODE_ENV for logging errors in development. These errors will be entirely removed in production if the following build steps are configured.

Webpack

DefinePlugin plugin is required when using Webpack.

new webpack.DefinePlugin({
  'process.env.NODE_ENV': JSON.stringify(process.env.NODE_ENV || 'production'),
}),

Browserify

Envify transformer is required when using Browserify.

envify({
  NODE_ENV: process.env.NODE_ENV || 'production',
});

Style Adapters

An adapter in the context of Aesthetic is a third-party library that supports CSS in JavaScript, whether it be injecting CSS styles based off JavaScript objects, importing CSS during a build process, or simply referencing CSS class names.

The following libraries and their features are officially supported by Aesthetic.

Adapter	Unified Syntax	Pseudos	Fallbacks	Fonts	Animations	Media Queries
CSS class names		✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
CSS modules		✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Aphrodite	✓	✓		✓	✓	✓
Fela	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
Glamor	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓
JSS	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

The following libraries are currently not supported.

• CSSX - Does not generate unique class names during compilation and instead uses the literal class names and or tag names defined in the style declaration. This allows for global style collisions, which we want to avoid.
• Styletron - Currently does not support animations, font faces, or globals. Will revisit in the future.

Creating A Styler

To start using Aesthetic, a styler function must be created. This styler function acts as a factory for the creation of higher-order-components (HOC). These HOC's are used in transforming styles via adapters and passing down CSS class names to the original wrapped component.

To begin, we must create an instance of Aesthetic with an adapter, pass it to createStyler, and export the new function. I suggest doing this an a file that can be imported for reusability.

import Aesthetic, { createStyler } from 'aesthetic';
import JSSAdapter from 'aesthetic-adapter-jss'; // Or your chosen adapter

export default createStyler(new Aesthetic(new JSSAdapter()));

Once we have a styler function, we can import it and wrap our React components. The styler function accepts a style declaration as its first argument, and an object of configurable options as the second. The following options are supported.

• styleName (string) - The unique style name of the component. This name is primarily used in logging and caching. Defaults to the component or function name.
• extendable (boolean) - Allows the component and its styles to be extended, creating a new component in the process. Defaults to false.
• classNamesPropName (string) - Name of the prop in which the compiled class names object is passed to. Defaults to classNames.
• themePropName (string) - Name of the prop in which the theme name is passed to. Defaults to theme.

export default style({
  button: { ... },
}, {
  styleName: 'CustomButton',
  extendable: true,
  classNamesPropName: 'classes',
  themePropName: 'appTheme',
})(Button);

Defining Components

Now that we have a styler function, we can start styling our components by wrapping the component declaration with the styler function and passing an object of styles. When this component is rendered, the style object is transformed into an object of class names, and passed to the classNames prop.

import React, { PropTypes } from 'react';
import { ClassNamesPropType } from 'aesthetic';
import style from '../path/to/styler';

function Button({ children, classNames, icon }) {
  return (
    <button type="button" className={classNames.button}>
      {icon && (
        <span className={classNames.icon}>{icon}</span>
      )}

      {children}
    </button>
  );
}

Button.propTypes = {
  children: PropTypes.node,
  classNames: ClassNamesPropType,
  icon: PropTypes.node,
};

export default style({
  button: { ... },
  icon: { ... }
})(Button);

Customizing Styles

Since styles are isolated and colocated within a component, they can be impossible to customize, especially if the component comes from a third-party library. If a component styled by Aesthetic is marked as extendable, styles can be customized by calling the static extendStyles method on the wrapped component instance.

Extending styles will return the original component wrapped with new styles, instead of wrapping the styled component and stacking on an unnecessary layer.

import BaseButton from '../path/to/styled/Button';

export const Button = BaseButton.extendStyles({
  button: {
    background: 'white',
    // ...
  },
});

export const PrimaryButton = BaseButton.extendStyles({
  button: {
    background: 'blue',
    // ...
  },
});

Parent styles (the component that was extended) are available when using a style function, allowing multiple layers of styles to be inherited.

Combining Classes

When multiple class names need to be applied to a single element, the classes function provided by Aesthetic can be used. This function accepts an arbitrary number of arguments, all of which can be strings, arrays, or objects that evaluate to true.

import { classes } from 'aesthetic';

classes(
  'foo',
  expression && 'bar',
  {
    baz: false,
    qux: true,
  },
); // foo qux

Using our Button examples above, let's add an active state and combine classes like so. Specificity is important, so define styles from top to bottom!

function Button({ children, classNames, icon, active = false }) {
  return (
    <button
      type="button"
      className={classes(
        classNames.button,
        active && classNames.button__active,
      )}
    >
      {icon && (
        <span className={classNames.icon}>{icon}</span>
      )}

      {children}
    </button>
  );
}

Styling Components

As mentioned previously, to style a component, an object or function must be passed as the first argument to the styler function. This object represents a mapping of elements (and modifiers) to declarations. For example:

style({
  button: { ... },
  button__active: { ... },
  icon: { ... },
})(Button)

The following types of declarations are permitted.

External Classes

External CSS class names can be referenced by passing a string of the class name.

style({
  button: 'button',
  button__active: 'button--active',
  icon: 'button__icon',
})(Button)

To make use of class names, the provided ClassNameAdapter must be used.

import Aesthetic, { createStyler, ClassNameAdapter } from 'aesthetic';

export default createStyler(new Aesthetic(new ClassNameAdapter()));

Style Objects

CSS styles can be defined using an object of properties to values. These objects are transformed using adapters and optionally support the unified syntax defined by Aesthetic.

style({
  button: {
    background: '#eee',
    // ...
  },
  button__active: {
    background: '#fff',
    // ...
  },
  icon: {
    display: 'inline-block',
    verticalAlign: 'middle',
    // ...
  },
})(Button)

Style Functions

Style functions are simply functions that return a style object. The benefits of using a function is that it provides the current theme as the first argument, and the previous styles as the second argument.

style(function (theme, prevStyles) {
  // ...
})(Button)

Theming Components

Themes are great in that they enable components to be styled in different ways based on pre-defined style guide parameters, like font size, color hex codes, and more.

To make use of a theme, register it through the Aesthetic instance using registerTheme. This method accepts a name, an object of parameters, and an optional style object used for globals (like font faces and animation keyframes).

aesthetic.registerTheme('dark', {
  unit: 'em',
  unitSize: 8,
  spacing: 5,
  font: 'Roboto',
  bgColor: 'darkgray',
}, {
  '@font-face': {
    roboto: {
      fontFamily: 'Roboto',
      fontStyle: 'normal',
      fontWeight: 'normal',
      src: "url('roboto.woff2') format('roboto')",
    },
  },
});

Global styles are immediately compiled and attached the DOM. Be wary of conflicts.

If you'd like to extend a base theme to create a new theme, use extendTheme. This method accepts the theme name to inherit from as the first argument, with the remaining arguments matching registerTheme.

aesthetic.extendTheme('dark', 'darker', {
  bgColor: 'black',
});

Extending themes will deep merge the two parameter objects.

Using Theme Styles

Once a theme has been registered, we can access the style parameters by using a style function. The parameters object is passed as the first argument to the function.

style((theme) => ({
  button: {
    fontSize: `${theme.unitSize}${theme.unit}`,
    fontFamily: theme.font,
    padding: theme.spacing,
  },
}))(Component);

Activating Themes

To activate and inform components to use a specific theme, we must use the ThemeProvider, which accepts a name of the theme.

import { ThemeProvider } from 'aesthetic';

<ThemeProvider name="default">
  // All components within here will use the "default" theme

  <ThemeProvider name="dark">
    // And all components here will use "dark"
  </ThemeProvider>
</ThemeProvider>

Or by passing a theme prop to an individual component.

<Button theme="dark">Save</Button>

Unified Syntax

Aesthetic provides an optional unified CSS-in-JS syntax. This unified syntax permits easy drop-in replacements between adapters that utilize CSS-in-JS objects, as well as a standard across libraries.

Pros

• Easily swap between CSS-in-JS adapters (for either performance or extensibility reasons) without having to rewrite all CSS style object syntax.
• Third-party UI libraries can define their styles using the unified syntax, while consumers can choose their preferred adapter.
• Third-party UI libraries can standardize on a single syntax for interoperability.
• Only have to learn one form of syntax.

Cons

• Slight overhead (like milliseconds) converting the unified syntax to the adapters native syntax. However, Aesthetic caches heavily.
• Must learn a new form of syntax (hopefully the last one).

Why a new syntax?

While implementing adapters and writing tests for all their syntax and use cases, I noticed that all adapters shared about 90-95% of the same syntax. That remaining percentage could easily be abstracted away by a library, and hence, this unified syntax was created.

Furthermore, a unified syntax allows providers of third-party components to define their styles in a standard way with consumers having the choice of their preferred adapter.

Why a different at-rule structure?

The major difference between the unified syntax and native adapters syntax, is that at-rules in the unified syntax are now multi-dimensional objects indexed by the name of the at-rule (@media), while at-rules in the native syntax are single objects indexed by the at-rule declaration (@media (min-width: 100px)).

Supporting the native syntax incurred an linear (O(n)) lookup, as we would have to loop through each object recursively to find all at-rules, while the unified syntax is a simple constant (O(1)) lookup as we know the names ahead of time. This constant time lookup is what enables a fast conversion process between the unified and native syntaxes.

How do I enable the unified syntax?

Please refer to the readme of your chosen adapter.

Properties

Standard structure for defining properties.

• Supports camel case property names.
• Units can be written is literal numbers.

button: {
  margin: 0,
  padding: 5,
  display: 'inline-block',
  lineHeight: 'normal',
  textAlign: 'center',
  cursor: 'pointer',
  backgroundColor: '#ccc',
  color: '#000',
},
buttonGroup: {
  // ...
},

JSS requires the jss-default-unit, jss-camel-case, and jss-nested plugins for unified syntax support.

Pseudos

Pseudo elements and classes are defined inside an element as nested objects.

button: {
  // ...
  ':hover': {
    backgroundColor: '#eee',
  },
  '::before': {
    content: '"★"',
    display: 'inline-block',
    marginRight: 5,
  },
},

Fallbacks

Property fallbacks for old browsers are defined under the @fallbacks object. Each property accepts a single value or an array of values.

wrapper: {
  // ...
  background: 'linear-gradient(...)',
  display: 'flex',
  '@fallbacks': {
    background: 'red',
    display: ['box', 'flex-box'],
  },
},

Aphrodite does not support fallback styles.

Fela requires the fela-plugin-fallback-value plugin.

Media Queries

Media queries are defined inside an element using a @media object.

tooltip: {
  // ...
  maxWidth: 300,
  '@media': {
    '(min-width: 400px)': {
      maxWidth: 'auto',
    },
  },
},

Font Faces

Font faces are defined outside the element using a @font-face object and are referenced by font family name.

'@font-face': {
  roboto: {
    fontFamily: 'Roboto',
    fontStyle: 'normal',
    fontWeight: 'normal',
    src: "url('roboto.woff2') format('roboto')",
  },
},
button: {
  // ...
  fontFamily: 'Roboto',
},
tooltip: {
  // ...
  fontFamily: 'Roboto, sans-serif',
},

Animations

Animation keyframes are defined outside the element using a @keyframes object and are referenced by animation name (the object key).

'@keyframes': {
  fade: {
    from: { opacity: 0 },
    to: { opacity: 1 },
  },
},
button: {
  // ...
  animationName: 'fade',
  animationDuration: '3s',
},

Selectors

Parent, child, and sibling selectors are purposefully not supported. Use unique and isolated element names and style declarations instead.

Competitors Comparison

A brief comparison of Aesthetic to competing React style abstraction libraries.

Features

	aesthetic	react-with-styles	styled-components	radium
Abstraction	HOC	HOC	Template Literals	HOC
Type	Classes	Classes, Inline styles	Classes	Inline styles
Unified Syntax	✓
Caching	✓		✓	N/A
Themes	✓	✓	✓
Style Extending	✓		✓

Adapters

	aesthetic	react-with-styles	styled-components	radium
CSS class names	✓
CSS Modules	✓
Aphrodite	✓	✓
Fela	✓
Glamor	✓		✓
JSS	✓	✓
React Native		✓