CSS pseudo elements in React

Michael Johansen picture Michael Johansen · Feb 2, 2015 · Viewed 105.5k times · Source

I'm building React components. I have added CSS inline in the components as suggested in this brilliant presentation by one of the guys behind React. I've been trying all night to find a way to add CSS pseudo classes inline, like on the slide titled "::after" in the presentation. Unfortunately, I do not just need to add the content:""; property, but also position:absolute; -webkit-filter: blur(10px) saturate(2);. The slides show how to add content through {/* … */}, but how would you add other properties?

Answer

Michael Johansen picture Michael Johansen · Feb 2, 2015

Got a reply from @Vjeux over at the React team:

Normal HTML/CSS:

<div class="something"><span>Something</span></div>
<style>
    .something::after {
    content: '';
    position: absolute;
    -webkit-filter: blur(10px) saturate(2);
}
</style>

React with inline style:

render: function() {
    return (
        <div>
          <span>Something</span>
          <div style={{position: 'absolute', WebkitFilter: 'blur(10px) saturate(2)'}} />
        </div>
    );
},

The trick is that instead of using ::after in CSS in order to create a new element, you should instead create a new element via React. If you don't want to have to add this element everywhere, then make a component that does it for you.

For special attributes like -webkit-filter, the way to encode them is by removing dashes - and capitalizing the next letter. So it turns into WebkitFilter. Note that doing {'-webkit-filter': ...} should also work.