react-inlinesvg

What is react-inlinesvg?

The react-inlinesvg package allows you to easily include and manipulate SVG files directly within your React components. This can be useful for adding icons, illustrations, and other vector graphics to your application without the need for additional HTTP requests.

What are react-inlinesvg's main functionalities?

Basic SVG Inclusion

This feature allows you to include an SVG file directly in your React component by specifying the path to the SVG file.

import React from 'react';
import SVG from 'react-inlinesvg';

const App = () => (
  <div>
    <SVG src="/path/to/your.svg" />
  </div>
);

export default App;

Customizing SVG with Props

You can customize the SVG by passing additional props such as className or using the preProcessor function to modify the SVG code before it is rendered.

import React from 'react';
import SVG from 'react-inlinesvg';

const App = () => (
  <div>
    <SVG src="/path/to/your.svg" className="custom-class" preProcessor={(code) => code.replace(/fill=".*?"/g, 'fill="currentColor"')} />
  </div>
);

export default App;

Handling Load and Error Events

This feature allows you to handle load and error events when the SVG is being fetched and rendered, providing better control over the SVG loading process.

import React from 'react';
import SVG from 'react-inlinesvg';

const App = () => (
  <div>
    <SVG src="/path/to/your.svg" onLoad={() => console.log('SVG loaded!')} onError={(error) => console.error('Error loading SVG:', error)} />
  </div>
);

export default App;

Other packages similar to react-inlinesvg

react-svg

The react-svg package is another popular library for including SVGs in React applications. It provides similar functionality to react-inlinesvg, allowing you to load and manipulate SVG files. However, react-svg focuses more on ease of use and simplicity, while react-inlinesvg offers more customization options.

svg-react-loader

The svg-react-loader package is a Webpack loader that transforms SVG files into React components. This approach allows for more advanced manipulation and optimization of SVGs at build time, but it requires a more complex setup compared to react-inlinesvg.

react-svg-loader

The react-svg-loader package is similar to svg-react-loader but is specifically designed for use with React. It converts SVG files into React components, allowing for easy inclusion and manipulation of SVGs within your React application. It offers a balance between ease of use and customization.

README

react-inlinesvg

One of the reasons SVGs are awesome is because you can style them with CSS. Unfortunately, this winds up not being too useful in practice because the style element has to be in the same document. This leaves you with three bad options:

1. Embed the CSS in the SVG document
   • Can't use your CSS preprocessors (LESS, SASS)
   • Can't target parent elements (button hover, etc.)
   • Makes maintenance difficult
2. Link to a CSS file in your SVG document
   • Sharing styles with your HTML means duplicating paths across your project, making maintenance a pain
   • Not sharing styles with your HTML means extra HTTP requests (and likely duplicating paths between different SVGs)
   • Still can't target parent elements
   • Your SVG becomes coupled to your external stylesheet, complicating reuse.
3. Embed the SVG in your HTML
   • Bloats your HTML
   • SVGs can't be cached by browsers between pages.
   • A maintenance nightmare

But there's an alternative that sidesteps these issues: load the SVG with an XHR request and then embed it in the document. That's what this component does.

Note

The SVG <use> element can be used to achieve something similar to this component. See this article for more information and this table for browser support and caveats.

Usage

First install it.

npm i react-inlinesvg

And import it into your code:

import SVG from 'react-inlinesvg';

<SVG
    src="/path/to/myfile.svg"
    preloader={<Loader />}
    onLoad={(src) => {
        myOnLoadHandler(src);
    }}
>
  Here's some optional content for browsers that don't support XHR or inline
  SVGs. You can use other React components here too. Here, I'll show you.
  <img src="/path/to/myfile.png" />
</SVG>

Props

src {string}
The SVG file you want to load. It can be an url or a string (base64 or encoded)

wrapper {function} ▶︎ React.createFactory('span')
A React class or a function that returns a component instance to be used as the wrapper component.

preloader {node}
A component to be shown while the SVG is loading.

className {string}
A class to add to the default wrapper.

cacheGetRequests {boolean} ▶︎ false Only request SVGs once.

uniquifyIDs {boolean} ▶︎ true
Create unique IDs for each icon.

uniqueHash {string}
A string to use with uniquifyIDs.

baseURL {string} An URL to prefix each ID in case you are using the <base> tag.

processSVG {function} ▶︎ string A function to process the contents of the SVG text before rendering.

onLoad {function} ▶︎ a random 8 characters string [A-Za-z0-9]
A callback to be invoked upon successful load.
This will receive 2 arguments: the src prop and a isCached boolean

onError {function}
A callback to be invoked if loading the SVG fails.
This will receive a single argument:

• a xhr RequestError with:

{
    ...,
    isHttpError: bool,
    status: number
}

• or an InlineSVGError, which has the following properties:

{
    name: 'InlineSVGError',
    isSupportedBrowser: bool,
    isConfigurationError: bool,
    isUnsupportedBrowserError: bool,
    message: string
}

Browser Support

Any browsers that support inlining SVGs and XHR will work. The component goes out of its way to handle IE9's weird XHR support so, IE9 and up get your SVG; lesser browsers get the fallback. We use httpplease for XHR requests.

CORS

If loading SVGs from another domain, you'll need to make sure it allows CORS.

XSS Warning

This component places the loaded file into your DOM, so you need to be careful about XSS attacks. Only load trusted content, and don't use unsanitized user input to generate the src!

Credits

Thanks to @matthewwithanm for creating this component and so kindly transfer it to me. I'll definitely keep the good work! ❤️