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Last modified: Sep 8, 2021

Styling (css)

Guidelines for styling components in Altinn Studio

Summary

Styling in React is done per component using a combination of Material-UI and compatible JSS.

Components shall not be styled with CSS classes in .CSS files.

Different component types should use different styling methods, or a combination.

Proposed order of styling methods

The following order is proposed when considering styling methods:

Shared Components

Shared components should utilize “Styled Components” which can write Props directly in the CSS styling.
The alternative way is handling styling via props is leveraging “inline styling” combined with Material-UI’s JSS. When using inline styling, the component’s styling will be configured in two different places.

Inline style example

<FormControl
  fullWidth={true}
  style={{
    width: this.props.width ? this.props.width : null,
  }}
>

Styled Components example

const theme = createMuiTheme(altinnTheme);

const StyledPopper = styled(({ ...otherProps }) => (
  <Popper {...otherProps} />
))`
    color: ${theme.altinnPalette.primary.black};
    background: ${theme.altinnPalette.primary.redLight};
    border-radius: 0;
    box-shadow: 1px 1px 4px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25);
    font-size: 16px;
    padding: 24px;
    max-width: 550px;
    margin-top: 10px;
    z-index: ${(props) => props.zIndex || 1}
`;

class AltinnPopper extends React.Component<IAltinnPopperComponentProvidedProps, IAltinnPopperComponentState> {
  public render() {
    const open = Boolean(this.props.anchorEl);
    return (
      <StyledPopper
        open={open}
        anchorEl={this.props.anchorEl}
        placement={'bottom-start'}
      >
        {this.props.message}
      </StyledPopper>
    );
  }
}

export default AltinnPopper;

Exception

There will be examples where “Styled Components” are hard to configure using some of Material-UI’s components where “Props” with styling needs to be passed down to sub-components. Then the regular CreateStyles method from Material-UI needs to be leveraged and can be used in a combination with Styled Components.

Styled object example

const styles = {
  searchBoxInput: {
    fontSize: '16px',
    color: '#000000',
    padding: '6px',
  },
  searchBoxIcon: {
    color: '#000000',
    fontSize: '30px',
    marginRight: '10px',
  },
};

React component, with Styled Component AND ‘classes.searchBoxInput’ from Styled Object example above.

class AltinnSearchInput extends React.Component<IAltinnSearchInputComponentProvidedProps, IAltinnSearchInputComponentState> {
  public render() {
    const { classes } = this.props;
    return (
      <StyledFormControl
        id='StyledForm'
        fullWidth={true}
      >
        <TextField
          id={this.props.id}
          placeholder={this.props.placeholder}
          onChange={this.props.onChangeFunction}
          InputProps={{
            disableUnderline: true,
            startAdornment:
              <InputAdornment
                position={'end'}
                classes={{ root: classNames(classes.searchBoxIcon) }}
              >
                <i className={'ai ai-search'} />
              </InputAdornment>,
              classes: { root: classNames(classes.searchBoxInput) },
          }}
        />
      </StyledFormControl>
    );
  }
}

export default withStyles(styles)(AltinnSearchInput);

Contained Components

Contained components are React components which are not shared in other parts of the React application. It’s encouraged to consider the styling order above.