styled-components

What is styled-components?

The styled-components npm package is a library for styling React applications. It utilizes tagged template literals to style your components. It allows you to write actual CSS code to style your components without worrying about class name bugs due to its unique feature of scoped styles. It also supports theming, dynamic styling, and can work with server-side rendering.

What are styled-components's main functionalities?

Basic Styling

This feature allows you to create React components with styles attached to them. The example shows how to create a styled button component.

import styled from 'styled-components';

const Button = styled.button`
  background: palevioletred;
  border-radius: 3px;
  border: none;
  color: white;
`;

Theming

Theming support allows you to define a set of constants for styling that can be accessed throughout your application. The example shows how to use a theme to style a button component.

import styled, { ThemeProvider } from 'styled-components';

const ThemeButton = styled.button`
  background: ${props => props.theme.main};
  color: ${props => props.theme.secondary};
`;

const theme = {
  main: 'mediumseagreen',
  secondary: 'white'
};

<ThemeProvider theme={theme}>
  <ThemeButton>Click me</ThemeButton>
</ThemeProvider>;

Dynamic Styling

Dynamic styling allows you to pass props to your styled component to change its appearance dynamically. The example shows a div that changes its background and text color based on props.

import styled from 'styled-components';

const DynamicDiv = styled.div`
  background: ${props => props.bgColor};
  color: ${props => props.textColor};
`;

<DynamicDiv bgColor='papayawhip' textColor='palevioletred'>Dynamic Content</DynamicDiv>;

Server-Side Rendering

styled-components can be rendered on the server, allowing you to generate the required styles along with your HTML for faster initial load times. The example shows how to use ServerStyleSheet to collect styles during server-side rendering.

import { ServerStyleSheet, StyleSheetManager } from 'styled-components';

const sheet = new ServerStyleSheet();

<StyleSheetManager sheet={sheet.instance}>
  <YourApp />
</StyleSheetManager>;

const styleTags = sheet.getStyleTags(); // gets all the tags from the sheet

Other packages similar to styled-components

emotion

Emotion is a performant and flexible CSS-in-JS library. It is similar to styled-components but offers a different API and additional features like composition patterns and the ability to work with plain objects instead of template literals.

jss

JSS is an authoring tool for CSS which allows you to use JavaScript to describe styles in a declarative, conflict-free and reusable way. It differs from styled-components in its approach to styling, using JavaScript objects instead of tagged template literals.

aphrodite

Aphrodite is another CSS-in-JS library that allows you to write styles in JavaScript and attach them to your components. It focuses on performance by generating as little CSS as possible and supports server-side rendering, but it does not use tagged template literals.

linaria

Linaria is a zero-runtime CSS-in-JS library that extracts CSS to real CSS files during the build process. Unlike styled-components, which injects styles at runtime, Linaria aims to provide better performance by avoiding the runtime style injection.

README

Visual primitives for the component age. Use the best bits of ES6 and CSS to style your apps without stress 💅

npm i styled-components

yarn add styled-components

Utilising tagged template literals (a recent addition to JavaScript) and the power of CSS, styled-components allows you to write actual CSS code to style your components. It also removes the mapping between components and styles – using components as a low-level styling construct could not be easier!

styled-components is compatible with both React (for web) and ReactNative – meaning it's the perfect choice even for truly universal apps! See the documentation about ReactNative for more information.

Note: If you're not using npm as your package manager, aren't using a module bundler or aren't sure about either of those jump to Alternative Installation Methods.

Made by Glen Maddern, Max Stoiber and Phil Plückthun, supported by Front End Center and Thinkmill. Thank you for making this project possible!

Docs

See the documentation at styled-components.com/docs for more information about using styled-components!

Quicklinks

Quicklinks to some of the most-visited pages:

• Getting started
• API Reference
• Theming
• Server-side rendering
• Tagged Template Literals explained

Linting

There is (currently experimental) support for stylelint – meaning you can take advantage of 150 rules to make sure your styled-components CSS is solid!

See the stylelint-processor-styled-components repository for installation instructions.

Syntax highlighting

The one thing you lose when writing CSS in template literals is syntax highlighting. We're working hard on making proper syntax highlighting happening in all editors. We currently have support for Atom, Visual Studio Code, WebStorm, and soon Sublime Text.

This is what it looks like when properly highlighted:

Atom

@gandm, the creator of language-babel, has added support for styled-components in Atom!

To get proper syntax highlighting, all you have to do is install and use the language-babel package for your JavaScript files!

Sublime Text

There is an open PR by @garetmckinley to add support for styled-components to babel-sublime! (if you want the PR to land, feel free to 👍 the initial comment to let the maintainers know there's a need for this!)

As soon as that PR is merged and a new version released, all you'll have to do is install and use babel-sublime to highlight your JavaScript files!

Visual Studio Code

@gandm's language-babel has been ported to VSCode under the name Babel JavaScript by Michael McDermott. It provides the same all-in-one solution for Babel syntax highlighting with styled-components included.

If you would like to keep your current JavaScript syntax highlighting, you can use the vscode-styled-components extension to provide styled-components syntax highlighting inside your Javascript files. You can install it as usual from the Marketplace.

VIM / NeoVim

The vim-styled-components plugin gives you syntax highlighting inside your Javascript files. Install it with your usual plugin manager like Plug, Vundle, Pathogen, etc.

Also if you're looking for an awesome javascript syntax package you can never go wrong with YAJS.vim.

WebStorm, IntelliJ IDEA, PhpStorm, PyCharm, and RubyMine

The webstorm-styled-components plugin adds code completion and highlighting for CSS properties and values in the template strings. And it also provides code completion and navigation for JavaScript symbols in the interpolations. You can install it from the IDE: go to Preferences | Plugins and search for Styled Components.

Other Editors

We could use your help to get syntax highlighting support to other editors! If you want to start working on syntax highlighting for your editor, open an issue to let us know.

Code completions and error reporting

Along with syntax highlighting, you can install the TypeScript styled plugin to get error reporting and code completion for styled components in your editor. The plugin supports styled components in both JavaScript and TypeScript files, and works in Visual Studio Code, Sublime, and Atom.

Built with styled-components

A lot of hard work goes into community libraries, projects, and guides. A lot of them make it easier to get started or help you with your next project! There’s also a whole lot of interesting apps and sites that people have built using styled-components.

Make sure to head over to awesome-styled-components to see them all! And please contribute and add your own work to the list so others can find it.

Alternative Installation Methods

If you're not using a module bundler or not using npm as your package manager, we also have a global ("UMD") build!

You can use that via the unpkg CDN to get styled-components, the URL is https://unpkg.com/styled-components/dist/styled-components.min.js.

To install styled-components with bower you'd do:

bower install styled-components=https://unpkg.com/styled-components/dist/styled-components.min.js

To use it from your HTML, add this at the bottom of your index.html, and you'll have access to the global window.styled variable:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/styled-components/dist/styled-components.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Other solutions

If styled-components isn't quite what you're looking for, maybe something in this list is:

• glamorous - basically styled-components but using JS objects and functions instead of strings.

License

Licensed under the MIT License, Copyright © 2017 Glen Maddern and Maximilian Stoiber.

See LICENSE for more information.

Acknowledgements

This project builds on a long line of earlier work by clever folks all around the world. We'd like to thank Charlie Somerville, Nik Graf, Sunil Pai, Michael Chan, Andrey Popp, Jed Watson & Andrey Sitnik who contributed ideas, code or inspiration.

Special thanks to @okonet for the fantastic logo.