I'm a Senior Developer and Co-host of Friday Night Deploys Podcast. I'm also a dad that likes to play video games and lift, always failing to keep it real with the kidz.
Ultimately I think it comes down to what the application needs from how big it may be, how many developers are contributing, etc. However, if it's less or cleaner code we're worried about there are a number of things to consider down the road with CSS vs Styled Components.
If you're just importing one CSS stylesheet, then off the bat in our JS we technically have less code for our styling because all we have is our import './style.css' line and the rest are className="some-class". Although, there may come a time where we might need to modify styles based on state or props in our react component which can lead us down to potentially adding logic to our components to adjust for this. In larger projects can lead to some messy components.
I think what might be a better way to think about styled-components over CSS is that it aims to align itself better with Reacts component-based architecture with scoping styles but also giving you an API that is intended to work well with Reacts component API and patterns, ideally, resulting in a cleaner codebase for your components and your styling.
My first entry in the series may be more helpful for a "Why not use CSS?" question, as I go more into CSS vs CSS in JS for React!
Yes that helps immensely! I’ve done one React project so far and it wasn’t huge so as you said depending on the project size I was able to safely use a stylesheet without issue. I can totally see how that can become a problem as projects become more complex though.
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Hey Dylan,
Ultimately I think it comes down to what the application needs from how big it may be, how many developers are contributing, etc. However, if it's less or cleaner code we're worried about there are a number of things to consider down the road with CSS vs Styled Components.
If you're just importing one CSS stylesheet, then off the bat in our JS we technically have less code for our styling because all we have is our
import './style.css'line and the rest areclassName="some-class". Although, there may come a time where we might need to modify styles based on state or props in our react component which can lead us down to potentially adding logic to our components to adjust for this. In larger projects can lead to some messy components.I think what might be a better way to think about styled-components over CSS is that it aims to align itself better with Reacts component-based architecture with scoping styles but also giving you an API that is intended to work well with Reacts component API and patterns, ideally, resulting in a cleaner codebase for your components and your styling.
My first entry in the series may be more helpful for a "Why not use CSS?" question, as I go more into CSS vs CSS in JS for React!
Let's Take a Look at CSS in JS with React in 2019 - CSS & Inline Styling
Phil Tietjen ・ Sep 9 '19 ・ 5 min read
I hope it answers your question and thanks for asking it! :D
Yes that helps immensely! I’ve done one React project so far and it wasn’t huge so as you said depending on the project size I was able to safely use a stylesheet without issue. I can totally see how that can become a problem as projects become more complex though.