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/dist/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. This will ensure all users can use it successfully.
You can include JavaScript for all components by copying both govuk-frontend.min.js
and govuk-frontend.min.js.map
from node_modules/govuk-frontend/dist/govuk/
into your application and referencing the JavaScript directly:
<script type="module" src="{path-to-javascript}/govuk-frontend.min.js"></script>
Next you need to import and initialise GOV.UK Frontend by adding:
<script type="module">
import { initAll } from '{path-to-javascript}/govuk-frontend.min.js'
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.
5.4.0 (Feature release)
To install this version with npm, run npm install govuk-frontend@5.4.0
. You can also find more information about how to stay up to date in our documentation.
This release includes new features to help you include only the components your service uses. Doing this can help reduce the size of the JavaScript and CSS files sent to users, improving their experience.
New features
Create individual components with createAll
We've added a new createAll
function that lets you initialise specific components in the same way that initAll
does.
The createAll
function will:
- find all elements in the page with the corresponding
data-module
attribute - instantiate a component object for each element
- catch errors and log them in the console
- return an array of all the successfully instantiated component objects.
import { createAll, Button, Checkboxes } from 'govuk-frontend'
createAll(Button)
createAll(Checkboxes)
You can also pass a config object and a scope within which to search for elements.
You can find out more about how to use the createAll
function in our documentation.
This change was introduced in pull request #4975: Add createAll
function to initialise individual components.
Use tabular numbers easily with govuk-!-font-tabular-numbers
We've added a new override class for tabular number styling: govuk-!-font-tabular-numbers
.
Using tabular numbers can make it easier for users to read numbers intended for comparison to one another, or for numbers that dynamically update.
It was previously only possible to use tabular numbers by using the govuk-font-tabular-numbers
Sass mixin.
This change was introduced in pull request #4973: Add override class for tabular numbers.
Deprecated features
Importing layers using all
files
You'll see a warning when compiling your Sass if you import any of our layers using the all
file. Importing using the all
files is deprecated, and we’ll remove them in the next major release.
In your import statements, use a trailing /index
rather than /all
to load GOV.UK Frontend's files.
For example:
@import "govuk/index";
instead of @import "govuk/all";
;@import "govuk/<PATH>/index";
instead of @import "govuk/<PATH>/all";
;
You do not need /index
at the end of each import path if you’re using Dart Sass, LibSass 3.6.0 or higher, or Ruby Sass 3.6.0 or higher.
This change was introduced in pull request #4955: Rename all
files to index
for our Sass entry points.
Fixes
We've made fixes to GOV.UK Frontend in the following pull requests: