Styling

React components are styled very similarly to how you would natively style an HTML element. You have two options: CSS classes and inline styles. These styles are passed into a component by using props.

Inline styles

To add inline styles to your HTML elements, you just have to use the style property and pass it a JavaScript object defining your styles. You will notice that the keys of the CSS properties are camelCase, so font-size becomes fontSize.

Here is an example:

<input style={{
  width: 150,
  border: '1px solid #000',
  fontSize: 18, // camelCase for CSS properties that contain hyphens
}} />

CSS classes

The other basic way of styling your elements is to pass it the class attribute. As class is a reserved keyword in JavaScript, we will use the props className.

Example:

<input className="form-control"/>

Note: Since JSX is closer to JavaScript than HTML, React uses the camelCase property naming convention. You’ll notice that other properties such as tabindex become tabIndex.

create-react-app have webpack configured to be able to import a CSS file into your components. That gives you a way to have a .css file next to your component and import it.

To use it, you just have to define your CSS and import it in your component:

.Component {
  max-width: 540px;
  margin: 0 auto;
  padding: 40px 20px;
}

  import './Component.css';

Further reading

There are a number of other ways to style React Components, here are a few:

• CSS Modules

CSS-in-JS:

• Styled Components
• Glamorous
• styled-jsx

Inline Styles:

• Aphrodite
• Radium

For a more exhaustive list comparing these different options, check out https://github.com/MicheleBertoli/css-in-js