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Sampson Ovuoba for Devwares

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How to use Bootstrap in React Using a React Library

React is one of the most popular javascript frontend frameworks out there and its popularity does not come as a surprise as it is very flexible to use. Bootstrap on the other hand is an open-source CSS framework that features many templates for user interface components such as cards and modals.

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In this article, we will be making use of these two frameworks alongside a react library to create a simple landing page. The library we’ll be making use of is CDBReact which is an Elegant UI kit that has reusable components for building mobile-first, responsive websites, and web apps.

Prerequisites

The Landing page would be built with React, Bootstrap, and CDBReact. You don’t need to have any previous knowledge of CDBReact. Basic React Knowledge Basic Bootstrap knowledge NPM installed

This is an image of the Landing page that we will build.

Bootstrap Landing Page

Setup

First Check that you have node installed. To do this, run the following code

node -v

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If you don’t have nodejs installed, download it here

Installing node also installs npm on your PC but you can still confirm using

npm -v.

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Now that we have node installed, we can start up our React project by going to the directory of our choice and running

npx create-react-app landing-page

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I chose landing-page for the name of my project but you can use whatever you want.

Install cdbreact

Now, we have to install cdbreact in our project

npm install --save cdbreact

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Or using Yarn

yarn add cdbreact

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Note that we dont need to install bootstrap or add it anywhere in our project as CDBReact does that for us upon installation.

Also Install React router because it is required by the Navbar we’ll be creating.

npm install react-router-dom

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Now run npm start to make sure that everything runs smoothly

Navbar

Now let’s proceed to create a navbar for our landing page.

Create a file named Navbar

Import Navbar and other components we will be using from cdbreact

import React, { useState } from 'react';

import {

  CDBBtn,

  CDBNavbar,

  CDBNavBrand,

  CDBNavbarNav,

  CDBNavToggle,

  CDBNavItem,

  CDBNavLink,

  CDBCollapse,

} from 'cdbreact';

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After that, add the following code for the navbar.

const Navbar = () => {

  const [collapse, setCollapse] = useState(false);

  return (

    <header

      className="page-header"

      style={{ width: '60%', margin: '0 auto', 'max-width': '1320px' }}

    >

      <CDBNavbar

        className="navigation bg-transparent p-0"

        expand="md"

        dark

        scrolling

      >

        <CDBNavBrand href="/">

          <img alt="logo" src="/logo192.png" width="25px" />

        </CDBNavBrand>

        <CDBNavToggle

          onClick={() => {

            setCollapse(!collapse);

          }}

        />

        <CDBCollapse id="navbarCollapse1" delay="0" isOpen={collapse} navbar>

          <CDBNavbarNav>

            <CDBNavItem active>

              <CDBBtn flat className="p-2 border-0 bg-transparent">

                <CDBNavLink to="#">Home</CDBNavLink>

              </CDBBtn>

            </CDBNavItem>

            <CDBNavItem>

              <CDBBtn flat className="p-2 border-0 bg-transparent">

                <CDBNavLink to="#">Resources</CDBNavLink>

              </CDBBtn>

            </CDBNavItem>

            <CDBNavItem>

              <CDBBtn flat className="p-2 border-0 bg-transparent">

                <CDBNavLink to="#">Blog</CDBNavLink>

              </CDBBtn>

            </CDBNavItem>

            <CDBNavItem>

              <CDBBtn flat className="p-2 border-0 bg-transparent">

                <CDBNavLink to="#">Contact</CDBNavLink>

              </CDBBtn>

            </CDBNavItem>

            <CDBNavItem>

              <CDBBtn flat className="p-2 border-0 bg-transparent">

                <CDBNavLink to="#">Support</CDBNavLink>

              </CDBBtn>

            </CDBNavItem>

          </CDBNavbarNav>

        </CDBCollapse>

      </CDBNavbar>

    </header>

  );

};

export default Navbar;

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From the piece of code above,we imported the necessary components from cdbreact and then we also created a collapse state that will be used by the navbar to know when it is open or not. We can notice some bootstrap clases such as ‘p-2’ and ‘border-0’ being used in the styling of the navbar.

Let’s import the Navbar into our App.js and also include our router from react-router-dom.

import './App.css';

import Navbar from './Navbar';

import { BrowserRouter as Router } from 'react-router-dom';

function App() {

  return (
    <Router>

      <div className="App">

        <Navbar />

      </div>

    </Router>

  );

}

export default App;

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Now lets edit our App.css file to give our page a black background colour

.App {
  background-color: black;
}

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After this, your navbar should appeared like in the image below.

Bootstrap Landing Page

Now lets move on to creating the rest of the page.

Landing Component

Create a new file called landing.js and in it, create a component called landing, also create a landing.css file that would be used for styling.

In your Landing.js, addd the following code

import React from 'react';

import './landing.css';

import { CDBBtn } from 'cdbreact';

const Landing = () => {

  return (

    <section className="page-head d-flex align-items-center text-right text-white">

      <img alt="landing" src="/landing.png" className="image" />

      <div className="page-info">

        <p className="page-title font-weight-bold ml-auto">

          Creativity is but skin deep

        </p>

        <p className="my-4">

          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Fugit, error

          amet numquam iure provident voluptate esse quasi, veritatis totam

          voluptas nostrum quisquam eum porro a pariatur accusamus veniam.

        </p>

        <CDBBtn

          flat

          style={{ background: '#8080ff', border: '2px #8080ff solid' }}

        >

          Start Now

        </CDBBtn>

      </div>

    </section>

  );

};

export default Landing;

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Here we import the landing.css file, we also import CDBBtn component from CDBReact and then use a number of bootstrap classes such as d-flex, align-items-center, and my-4 for styling. Also notice that we can pass custom styles to CDBReact components like we did to CDBBtn above.

Also add the following to your landing.css file.

.page-head {
  margin: 5rem auto 0 auto;
  width: 80%;
}

.page-head .image {
  width: 50%;
  max-width: 550px;
}

.page-info {
  width: 50%;
  text-align: right;
}

.page-title {
  font-size: 3em;
  max-width: 350px;
}

.page-info .btn {
  max-width: 200px;
}

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Then import the landing component into your App.js file, to make it look like this:


import './App.css';

import Navbar from './Navbar';

import { BrowserRouter as Router } from 'react-router-dom';

import Landing from './landing';

function App() {

  return (

    <Router>
      <div className="App">
        <Navbar />
        <Landing />
      </div>
    </Router>

  );

}

export default App;

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Now your landing page should be ready and look like the image below.

Bootstrap Landing Page

Congratulations, you have successfully built a landing page using react, bootstrap and CDBReact. Easy isn’t it? Pairing these tools can help you create awesome webpages that look beautiful in no time.

Resources

CDBReact docs

Bootstrap docs

Link to code on github

Create Stunning Websites and Web Apps

Building different custom components in react for your web apps or websites can get very stressful. That's why we decided to build contrast. We have put together a UI kit with over 10000+ components, 5 admin dashboards and 23 additional different pages template for building almost any type of web app or webpage into a single product called Contrast Pro. Try contrast pro!

Contrast Design Boostrap

Contrast React Bootstrap PRO is a Multipurpose pro template, UI kit to build your next landing, admin, SAAS, prelaunch, etc project with a clean, well documented, well crafted template and UI components. Learn more about Contrast Pro

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