DEV Community

3 Ways You Could Customize 3rd Party React Component

Jacob Goh on December 08, 2018

Introduction Component libraries make our life easier. But as developers, you would often find yourself in situations where 3rd party c...

Read full post

Sung M. Kim • Dec 12 '18

😮 Wow. This is awesome~

Thank you, Jacob.

I've used Ant Design's autocomplete but haven't had idea how to inject custom properties (accessibility props) but your article provided how I can get started.

yerycs • Dec 3 '19

Hello, thanks for your post.
About first case, if I use styles.modules.scss, then how can I override css?
If you tell me about this, I will appreciate it.
Thank you.

Jacob Goh • Dec 3 '19

If you are using CSS modules, you can use :global to target a CSS class name in a component.

for e.g.

/* sample.module.scss */
.wrapper :global(.a-class-inside-component) {
    padding: 1px;
}

will be compiled to CSS similar to

.wrapper_<some_random_hash> .a-class-inside-component {
    padding: 1px;
}

Hope this helps.

yerycs • Dec 3 '19

Great. It works. Thank you for your kindly help.
Can you tell me .wrapper meaning?
For me, it works with

:global(.a-class-inside-component) { padding: 1px; }
Maybe .wrapper has other meaning?
Thank you.

yerycs • Dec 3 '19

And if using this method, I have to use !important to override component.
Can you tell me if any other way is not using !important.
Thank you.

Jacob Goh • Dec 3 '19

Since

:global(.a-class-inside-component) {
    padding: 1px;
}

will be compiled to

.a-class-inside-component {
    padding: 1px;
}

it will affect every components which uses class .a-class-inside-component globally.

If you want the CSS to be applied globally, this is alright.
If you want to scope the CSS to 1 component only, it's recommended to use a wrapper class.

yerycs • Dec 3 '19

Thank you very much.
Should I use !important in my custom modules.scss to override css?
Is there any other way?

Jacob Goh • Dec 3 '19

Generally, it's considered a bad practice to use important. Don't use it unless you absolutely have to.

To avoid using important => stackoverflow.com/a/27443631/5599288

yerycs • Dec 3 '19

I will consider your words.
Thank you for your kindly help.
Hope good posts in the future.
Regards!

Jacob Goh • Dec 8 '18 • Edited

Glad it helped :) I know Vue too. I feel like Vue components would be even more customizable. For example, in wrapper component, you could set child's state like stackoverflow.com/a/51675344/5599288

Lukas Klinzing • Dec 9 '18

Patching sounds also nice a D straight forward. npmjs.com/package/patch-package