Component Style

Writing component styles in a way that is easy to maintain over the life of a growing and changing project is a challenging task.

To solve this, we came up with the idea of style configuration or styleConfig. This is a consistent theming API that makes component styling easy to understand and maintain.

Base styles and Modifier styles#

Most component style consists of base or default styles and modifier styles that alter its size or visual style based on some properties or state.

Common modifier styles includes:

  • Size: A component can have different sizes (e.g. small, medium, large)
  • Variant: A component can have different visual styles (e.g. outline, solid, ghost)
  • Color scheme: For a given variant, a component can have different color schemes (e.g. an outline button with a red color scheme)
  • Color mode: A component can change its visual styles based on color mode (e.g. light or dark).

Single part and multipart components#

Most components we build today are either single part components (e.g. Button, Badge) or multipart components (e.g. Tabs, Menu, Modal).

A single part component is a component that returns a single element. For example, the <Button> component renders a <button> HTML element:

// This component renders only one element (<button>)
<Button>My button</Button>

A multipart component is a component that has multiple parts, and require these parts to work correctly. This is commonly referred to as a composite component.

For example, a Tabs component consists of TabList, Tab, TabPanels, and TabPanel. Styling this component as a whole might require styling each component part.

<Tabs>
  <TabList>
    <Tab>Tab 1</Tab>
    <Tab>Tab 2</Tab>
  </TabList>
  <TabPanels>
    <TabPanel>Tab 1</TabPanel>
    <TabPanel>Tab 2</TabPanel>
  </TabPanels>
</Tabs>

Styling single part components#

The basic API for styling a single part component is:

export default {
  // Styles for the base style
  baseStyle: {},
  // Styles for the size variations
  sizes: {},
  // Styles for the visual style variations
  variants: {},
  // The default `size` or `variant` values
  defaultProps: {},
}

Let's say we want to create a custom button component following the design spec below.

Here's a contrived implementation of the design:

const Button = {
  // The styles all button have in common
  baseStyle: {
    fontWeight: "bold",
    textTransform: "uppercase",
  },
  // Two sizes: sm and md
  sizes: {
    sm: {
      fontSize: "12px",
      padding: "16px",
    },
    md: {
      fontSize: "16px",
      padding: "24px",
    },
  },
  // Two variants: outline and solid
  variants: {
    outline: {
      border: "2px solid",
      borderColor: "green.500",
    },
    solid: {
      bg: "green.500",
      color: "white",
    },
  },
  // The default size and variant values
  defaultProps: {
    size: "md",
    variant: "outline",
  },
}

Make sense? Next, we'll update the theme to include this new component style.

import { extendTheme } from "@chakra-ui/react"
const theme = extendTheme({
  components: {
    Button,
  },
})

Consuming style config#

Now that the button's style configuration is hooked into the theme, we can consume within any component using useStyleConfig hook.

useStyleConfig API#

const styles = useStyleConfig(themeKey, props)

Parameters#

  • themeKey: the key in theme.components that points to the desired styleConfig.
  • props: the options object used to compute the component styles. It typically consists of the size, variant, and colorScheme

Return Value#

The computed styles for the component based on props passed. If no props is passed, the defaultProps defined in the style config will be used.

// 1. Import useStyleConfig
import { useStyleConfig } from "@chakra-ui/react"
function Button(props) {
  const { size, variant, ...rest } = props
  // 2. Reference `Button` stored in `theme.components`
  const styles = useStyleConfig("Button", { size, variant })
  // 3. Pass the computed styles into the `sx` prop
  return <Box as="button" sx={styles} {...rest} />
}

And lastly - the fun part - let's use our custom button component anywhere in our app:

// 1. Using the default props defined in style config
function Usage() {
  return <Button>Click me</Button>
}
// 2. Overriding the default
function Usage() {
  return (
    <Button size="sm" variant="solid">
      Click me
    </Button>
  )
}

Styling multipart components#

This is very similar to styling single part components with a few differences you need to be aware of.

  • Given that multipart refers to a component with multiple parts, you'll need to define the parts in a part key in the style config.
  • You'll need to provide styles for each part, baseStyle, sizes, and variants.

Here's what the style config for multipart components looks like:

export default {
  // The parts of the component
  parts: [],
  // The base styles for each part
  baseStyle: {},
  // The size styles for each part
  sizes: {},
  // The variant styles for each part
  variants: {},
  // The default `size` or `variant` values
  defaultProps: {},
}

For example, here's what the style configurations for a custom menu component looks like:

const Menu = {
  parts: ["menu", "item"],
  baseStyle: {
    menu: {
      boxShadow: "lg",
      rounded: "lg",
      flexDirection: "column",
      py: "2",
    },
    item: {
      fontWeight: "medium",
      lineHeight: "normal",
      color: "gray.600",
    },
  },
  sizes: {
    sm: {
      item: {
        fontSize: "0.75rem",
        px: 2,
        py: 1,
      },
    },
    md: {
      item: {
        fontSize: "0.875rem",
        px: 3,
        py: 2,
      },
    },
  },
  defaultProps: {
    size: "md",
  },
}

Next, we'll update the theme object to included this new component style.

import { extendTheme } from "@chakra-ui/react"
const theme = extendTheme({
  components: {
    Menu,
  },
})

Consuming multipart style config#

Now that the style config is hooked into the theme, we can consume within any component using useMultiStyleConfig hook.

We can also mount the computed styles on a specialized context provider called StylesProvider. These styles will now be available to other sub-components. To read from the context, use the useStyles hook.

useMultiStyleConfig API#

const styles = useMultiStyleConfig(themeKey, props)

Parameters#

  • themeKey: the key in theme.components that points to the desired styleConfig.
  • props: an option of the options for computing the final styles. It typically consists of the size, variant, and colorScheme.

Return Values#

The computed styles for each component part based on size, or variant. If none of these were passed, the defaultProps defined in the styleConfig will be used.

// 1. Import the components and hook
import {
  StylesProvider,
  useMultiStyleConfig,
  useStyles,
} from "@chakra-ui/react"
function Menu(props) {
  const { size, variant, children, ...rest } = props
  // 2. Consume the `useMultiStyleConfig` hook
  const styles = useMultiStyleConfig("Menu", { size, variant })
  return (
    <Flex sx={styles.menu} {...rest}>
      {/* 3. Mount the computed styles on `StylesProvider` */}
      <StylesProvider value={styles}>{children}</StylesProvider>
    </Flex>
  )
}
function MenuItem(props) {
  // 4. Read computed `item` styles from styles provider
  const styles = useStyles()
  return <Box as="button" sx={styles.item} {...props} />
}

That's it! We can use our newly created multipart component in our application:

// 1. Using the default props defined in style config
function Usage() {
  return (
    <Menu>
      <MenuItem>Awesome</MenuItem>
      <MenuItem>Sauce</MenuItem>
    </Menu>
  )
}
// 2. Overriding the default
function Usage() {
  return (
    <Menu size="sm">
      <MenuItem>Awesome</MenuItem>
      <MenuItem>Sauce</MenuItem>
    </Menu>
  )
}
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