Styled components with React: syntax tips and tricks in 2022

Styled components with React: syntax tips and tricks in 2022

Although not particularly a new technology, after working with styled components for a while and jumping in to a new large codebase I've found the need for some more complex examples of styled components. Particularly with the advance use of themeing when working with components. The docs seem a little lacking in my honest opinion but that could just be because I have specific use case.

So here are some snippets I've found useful and if I manage to educate others then thats a win too.

1.Adding attributes to elements

const Btn = styled.button.attrs({
    type: "button",
})`

2.Adding multiple attributes to elements

Here I have a component that requires multiple attributes being set and access to the theme as colours are stored on it.

const Icon = styled(NamedIcon).attrs(theme => ({
  name: 'chevron',
  size: 24,
  fill: red(800)(theme),
  className: 'icon icon-prmiary',
}))``;

3.Adding attributes to elements with css

const Btn = styled.button.attrs({
  type: 'button',
})`
  padding: 0;
  margin: 0;
  background: transparent;
  border: none;
`;

4.Passing props

Props can be passed to styled components just as they are with regular React components (class or functional). This is possible because styled components are actually React components.

<Button background="blue">Click Me</Button>
<Text color="green">Some text in here</Text>

const Button = styled.button`
  padding: 2px 5px;
  background-color: ${props => (props.background ? props.background : 'transparent')};
  border-radius: 3px;
`;

const Text = styled.p`
    padding: 10px;
    color: color: ${props => (props.color ? props.color : 'black')};
`;

5.Changing multiple lines of css based on a prop value inside a ternary

Let say my button could have a small variant and I want to change a few bits of css depending on it.

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

^ Don't forget to add the css import to styled components!

const Btn = styled.button`
  ${({ small }) =>
    small
      ? css`
          display: inline-flex;
          padding: 0 10px;
          font-size: 1.2rem;
        `
      : css`
          display: flex;
          padding: 0 20px;
          font-size: 1.6rem;
        `}
`;

6.Style pseudo-selectors

const Btn = styled.button`
  ::before {
    content: '';
    //other css in here
  }
  :hover {
    background-colour: red;
  }
`;

7.Reassign the HTML tag that is associated

Styled components are dynamic in nature. They can change from creating and rendering one HTML element to another. Here's a couple of ways to do this.

Like this:

<Button as="a">Click Me</Button>

or like this:

const Btn = styled.button.attrs(() => ({
  as: "a",
}))`

8.Using object notation instead of template strings.

const Heading = styled.h1(({ small }) => ({
  textAlign: 'center',
  fontSize: small ? 16 : 24,
  fontFamily: 'Helvetica, sans-serif',
}));

The sky is the limit with styled components, hopefully these tips helped you!

Thanks for reading :)