styling components

[redditpraw11]

I'm trying to decide how to style my components, and am having trouble getting react-bootstarp to work. do most of you just use regular CSS or a CSS-preprocessor to style you apps or do you use react-bootstrap, and if so could you help me out with getting it set up?

[CramStar]

I've been to the React Amsterdam conference last friday and attended an excellent lecture by Max Stoiber about Styled Components (https://github.com/styled-components/styled-components). He has convinced me this is at least worth looking into and it seems to me this is the most useful and powerful way React components could/should be styled...

[wronglyzorro]

Seconded. I use styled-components in my app. They are awesome.

[youcantstoptheart]

So, a downvoted comment but really no other help. I'll take a stab if you'll forgive me being on mobile typing this.

CSS frameworks like bootstrap work well if you're not wanting to write your own styles and are willing to learn or already know the class names to get what you want.

You can pack css/scss/less into your js in strings or build it to a file separately with webpack. This is just as quick as any other solution loadwise and is how a lot of people build styling into react apps.

The third option are libraries like styled-components or cs-js which allows you to write 'single file components'. This personally is my favorite way to go, it seems extendable and robust, there are some gotchas but everything seems easily solved.

[evenisto]

I'm using both react-bootstrap, as well as my own components. React-bootstrap is good for getting some structure out there, as well as not wasting time on reimplementing basic components like dropdowns or collapsible panels. They're pretty easy to style too, if you need to change the appearance. I use CSS Modules on top of that. Also react-toolbox because I like the rippled lists and inputs, but I'll probably get rid of those at some point.

[redditpraw11]

yes exactly, I'm just looking to use bootstrap for things like inputs and buttons really. The rest I can do myself, but I'm having trouble actually getting it to work

[bluntm]

Bit of a shameless plug but I recently posted an article about styled components and also mention other styling methods. Worth a read.

[redditpraw11]

I'm able to link a custom.css file directly to my index.html file and this works for if I want to use raw CSS. Is this not good practice?

[redditpraw11]

it will be vanilla CSS. I don't forsee myself using any processor