Nobody likes ugly apps, that’s where styling comes in! There are two ways to style your React-Native app; StyleSheet and CSS-In-JS. There are pros and cons to each but in the end it is mostly a choice of preference. This post will cover them both, recreating the following design for each one.
Styling Basics
Before going into the two different methods it is important to cover the basics of styling in general. React-Native basically uses Flexbox for handling layout and a subset of CSS for the rest of the styling needs.
Flexbox
Flexbox is an algorithm used to provide a consistent layout on different screen sizes. The React-Native docs have a really good write-up of Flexbox, so instead of just copying it here, you should read through it here.
Views
Common CSS styling on a React-Native view,
- height: number
- width: number
- backgroundColor: color
- border: size color style
- padding: number
- margin: number
Text
Common CSS styling on a React-Native view,
- color: color
- fontFamily: string
- fontSize: number
- fontStyle: (‘normal’, ‘italic’)
- fontWeight: (‘normal’, ‘bold’, ‘100’, ‘200’, …, ‘900’)
- textAlign: (‘auto’, ‘left’, ‘right’, ‘center’, ‘justify’)
- textAlignVertical: enum(‘auto’, ‘top’, ‘bottom’, ‘center’)
- textDecorationLine: (‘none’, ‘underline’, ‘line-through’, ‘underline line-through’)
- textTransform: (‘none’, ‘uppercase’, ‘lowercase’, ‘capitalize’)
Styling Methods
StyleSheet
With StyleSheet, a javascript object is created to define the styles for your elements and are assigned to the elements via their style prop.
const styles = StyleSheet.create({
container: {
flex: 1,
},
})
;<View style={styles.container}>...</View>
Demo Code
import React from "react"
import { StyleSheet, Text, View } from "react-native"
export default function App() {
return (
<View style={styles.container}>
<View style={styles.box}>
<Text style={styles.title}>Stylin' App</Text>
<Text style={styles.subtitle}>Look good. Feel good.</Text>
</View>
</View>
)
}
const styles = StyleSheet.create({
container: {
flex: 1,
backgroundColor: "#e2e2e2",
alignItems: "center",
justifyContent: "center",
},
box: {
height: 200,
width: 300,
backgroundColor: "#fff",
alignItems: "center",
justifyContent: "center",
shadowColor: "#000",
shadowOffset: {
width: 0,
height: 2,
},
shadowOpacity: 0.25,
shadowRadius: 3.84,
elevation: 5,
},
title: {
fontFamily: "Helvetica",
fontWeight: "bold",
fontSize: 24,
paddingBottom: 8,
},
subtitle: {
fontFamily: "Helvetica",
fontStyle: "italic",
fontWeight: "100",
fontSize: 18,
},
})
CSS-In-JS
CSS-In-JS is a styling option that is fairly popular in React, allowing the developer to write normal CSS in javascript. In React-Native this isn’t as groundbreaking since StyleSheet is already basically CSS as a JavaScript object but using a CSS-In-JS library still has it’s advantages. There are numerous CSS-In-JS libraries but I prefer styled-components.
With styled-components, you write normal css in a template literal string to create a styled element.
const Container = styled.View`
flex: 1;
background: #e2e2e2;
align-items: center;
justify-content: center;
`
Advantages of styled-components over StyledSheet
Full CSS support
StyledSheet only supports a subset of CSS and also requires the property names to be camel cased, where as, styled-components supports as much CSS as possible on the React-Native platform.
A good example of this difference is with applying a box shadow,
// StyledSheet
box: {
shadowColor: "#000",
shadowOffset: {
width: 0,
height: 2
},
shadowOpacity: 0.25,
shadowRadius: 3.84,
elevation: 5
},
// styled-components
const Box = styled.View`
box-shadow: 0px 2px 3.84px #000;
shadow-opacity: 0.25;
elevation: 5;
`
Dynamic Styling
styled-components makes dynamic styling and theming simple by enabling prop usage in the styling code.
const Item = styled.View`
background-color:${props=>props.primary ? "blue" : "green"};
`
// Green background
<Item />
// Blue background
<Item primary />
Increased Readability
I find styled-components to lead to better organized & readable code since your JSX tree contains descriptive names for the custom elements you created instead of a bunch of View, Text, etc tags.
// StyleSheet
<View style={styles.container}>
<View style={styles.box}>
<Text style={styles.title}>Stylin' App</Text>
<Text style={styles.subtitle}>Look good. Feel good.</Text>
</View>
</View>
// styled-components
<Container>
<Box>
<Title>Stylin' App</Title>
<Subtitle>Look good. Feel good.</Subtitle>
</Box>
</Container>
Cross Platform
Although the styles written with styled-components do not directly translate between React and React-Native, the concepts and general flow do which is a big win if you are developing on multiple platforms.
// React
import styled from "styled-components"
const Container = styled.div`
background: red;
padding: 10px;
`
// React-Native
import styled from "styled-components"
const Container = styled.View`
background: red;
padding: 10px;
`
Demo Code
yarn add styled-components
import React from "react"
import styled from "styled-components"
export default function App() {
return (
<Container>
<Box>
<Title>Stylin' App</Title>
<Subtitle>Look good. Feel good.</Subtitle>
</Box>
</Container>
)
}
const Container = styled.View`
flex: 1;
background: #e2e2e2;
align-items: center;
justify-content: center;
`
const Box = styled.View`
height: 200;
width: 300;
background: #fff;
align-items: center;
justify-content: center;
box-shadow: 0px 2px 3.84px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25);
elevation: 5;
`
const Title = styled.Text`
font-family: Helvetica;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: 24;
padding-bottom: 8;
`
const Subtitle = styled.Text`
font-family: Helvetica;
font-style: italic;
font-weight: 100;
font-size: 18;
`
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