What is govuk-frontend?
The govuk-frontend npm package provides a set of reusable, accessible components and styles for building user interfaces that align with the UK Government Digital Service (GDS) design principles. It is designed to help developers create consistent, user-friendly, and accessible web applications and services.
What are govuk-frontend's main functionalities?
Typography
GOV.UK Frontend provides a set of typography styles that ensure text is readable and accessible. The 'govuk-body' class is used to style paragraphs according to GDS standards.
<p class="govuk-body">This is a paragraph with GOV.UK Frontend styling.</p>
Buttons
GOV.UK Frontend includes styles for buttons that make them visually consistent and accessible. The 'govuk-button' class is used to style buttons.
<button class="govuk-button">Submit</button>
Forms
GOV.UK Frontend provides styles and components for creating accessible forms. The 'govuk-form-group', 'govuk-label', and 'govuk-input' classes are used to style form elements.
<form><div class="govuk-form-group"><label class="govuk-label" for="input-id">Label text</label><input class="govuk-input" id="input-id" name="input-name" type="text"></div></form>
Navigation
GOV.UK Frontend includes styles for navigation elements to ensure they are accessible and consistent. The 'govuk-nav', 'govuk-nav__list', 'govuk-nav__item', and 'govuk-nav__link' classes are used to style navigation menus.
<nav class="govuk-nav"><ul class="govuk-nav__list"><li class="govuk-nav__item"><a class="govuk-nav__link" href="#">Home</a></li><li class="govuk-nav__item"><a class="govuk-nav__link" href="#">About</a></li></ul></nav>
Notifications
GOV.UK Frontend provides components for displaying notifications and alerts. The 'govuk-notification-banner', 'govuk-notification-banner__header', 'govuk-notification-banner__title', and 'govuk-notification-banner__content' classes are used to style notification banners.
<div class="govuk-notification-banner"><div class="govuk-notification-banner__header"><h2 class="govuk-notification-banner__title">Important</h2></div><div class="govuk-notification-banner__content"><p class="govuk-notification-banner__heading">This is a notification message.</p></div></div>
Other packages similar to govuk-frontend
bootstrap
Bootstrap is a popular front-end framework for developing responsive and mobile-first websites. It provides a wide range of components and utilities similar to GOV.UK Frontend but is more general-purpose and not specifically tailored to government services.
foundation-sites
Foundation is another front-end framework that offers a variety of responsive components and styles. Like Bootstrap, it is a general-purpose framework and does not specifically adhere to government design principles.
uswds
The U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) provides a set of design guidelines and components for building accessible and consistent government websites in the United States. It is similar to GOV.UK Frontend but tailored to U.S. government standards.
GOV.UK Frontend
GOV.UK Frontend contains the code you need to start building a user interface
for government platforms and services.
See live examples of GOV.UK Frontend components, and guidance on when to use
them in your service, in the GOV.UK Design System.
Contact the team
GOV.UK Frontend is maintained by a team at Government Digital Service. If you want to know more about GOV.UK Frontend, please email the Design System
team or get in touch with them on Slack.
Quick start
There are 2 ways to start using GOV.UK Frontend in your app.
Once installed, you will be able to use the code from the examples in the
GOV.UK Design System in your service.
1. Install with npm (recommended)
We recommend installing GOV.UK Frontend using node package manager
(npm).
2. Install by using compiled files
You can also download the compiled and minified assets (CSS, JavaScript) from
GitHub.
Importing styles
You need to import the GOV.UK Frontend styles into the main Sass file in your
project. You should place the below code before your own Sass rules (or Sass
imports) if you want to override GOV.UK Frontend with your own styles.
To import add the below to your Sass file:
@import "node_modules/govuk-frontend/govuk/all";
More details on importing styles
Importing JavaScript
Some of the JavaScript included in GOV.UK Frontend improves the usability and
accessibility of the components. You should make sure that you are importing and
initialising Javascript in your application to ensure that all users can use it successfully.
You can include Javascript for all components either by copying the all.js
from node_modules/govuk-frontend/govuk/
into your application or referencing the file directly:
<script src="<path-to-govuk-frontend-all-file>/all.js"></script>
Next you need to initialise the script by adding:
<script>window.GOVUKFrontend.initAll()</script>
More details on importing Javascript and advanced options
Importing assets
In order to import GOV.UK Frontend images and fonts to your project, you should configure your application to reference or copy the relevant GOV.UK Frontend assets.
More details on importing assets
Getting updates
To be notified when there’s a new release, you can either:
Find out how to update with npm.
Licence
Unless stated otherwise, the codebase is released under the MIT License. This
covers both the codebase and any sample code in the documentation. The
documentation is © Crown copyright and available under the terms of the
Open Government 3.0 licence.
Contribution guidelines
If you want to help us build GOV.UK Frontend, view our contribution
guidelines.
4.2.0 (Feature release)
New features
Help users navigate through pages with pagination
You can now use pagination to help users navigate forwards and backwards through a series of pages. For example, in search results or guidance that's divided into multiple website pages.
This was added in pull request #2610: Add pagination component.
Check checkboxes by using the values
Nunjucks option
When using the govukCheckboxes
Nunjucks macro, you can now use the values
option to determine which checkboxes should already be checked when the page loads.
For example, values: ['red', 'blue']
would check any checkboxes that have a value
of 'red' or 'blue'.
You can use this option instead of setting the boolean checked
option on each individual checkbox.
This change was introduced in pull request #2616: Allow selecting options by passing current values.
Check a radio button by using the value
Nunjucks option
When using the govukRadios
Nunjucks macro, you can now use the value
option to determine which radio should already be checked when the page loads.
For example, value: 'red'
would check the radio that has a value
of 'red'.
You can use this option instead of setting the boolean checked
option on each individual radio.
This change was introduced in pull request #2616: Allow selecting options by passing current values.
Select an option in a select by using the value
Nunjucks option
When using the govukSelect
Nunjucks macro, you can now use the value
option to determine which option should already be selected when the page loads.
For example, value: 'red'
would select the option that has a value
of 'red'.
You can use this option instead of setting the boolean selected
option on each individual option.
This change was introduced in pull request #2616: Allow selecting options by passing current values.
Recommended changes
Replace deprecated govuk-header__link--service-name
class in the header
If you're not using the Nunjucks macros in the header, replace any instances of the class govuk-header__link--service-name
with govuk-header__service-name
.
We've deprecated the govuk-header__link--service-name
class, and will remove it in a future major release.
This change was introduced in pull request #2617: Do not make the service name in the header a link if no serviceUrl
is provided.
File extensions added for JavaScript ES Module imports
We have updated our component ES module JavaScript to include missing file extensions not provided in release 4.1.0. If you have received an error similar to the following, for example when running or building your application, this fix should resolve the issue.
Cannot find module '../node_modules/govuk-frontend/govuk-esm/common' imported from ../node_modules/govuk-frontend/govuk-esm/all.mjs
You should not need to make any changes if you are successfully importing our JavaScript as ES modules with version 4.1.0, but there still might be config you can remove. For example, removing fullySpecified: false
from your Webpack config file.
This change was introduced in pull request #2658: Add missing mandatory file extensions for ESM JavaScript. Thanks to @colinrotherham and @tvararu for reporting issues and suggesting and testing fixes.
Fixes
We’ve made fixes to GOV.UK Frontend in the following pull requests: