How to use material-ui (alpha) with styeld-components properly? - reactjs

Question

I've been trying to use styled-components with the alpha version of material-ui
According to the documentation, this should work out of the box.
This code:
const StyledButton = styled(Button)`
color: red;
text-transform: uppercase;
`;
return <StyledButton>Button</StyledButton>;
will generate something like this:
<button tabindex="0" class="MuiButtonBase-root-3177716317 sc-bdVaJa sxRGN" type="button" role="button">
...
</button>
It looks good.
However, the only problem I have is the order of the injected CSS styles (pic). Styles from styled-components are injected before MUI's styles which make their priority lower.
Is there any way to solve this without using !important?

Answer 1

In the current release (i.e. non-alpha) version, what you've asked would indeed require !important basis:
"Note that CSS properties defined inline are given priority over those defined in a CSS class. You need to use !important to take precedence over the inline style."
Ref: http://www.material-ui.com/#/customization/styles
Perhaps the alpha hasn't quite moved away from this inline requirement yet or it is still a work-in-progress.
What I've done to overcome this sort of thing myself is to (unfortunately) recreate the entire CSS on a standard <button> element when I need such a solution. Here's an example of how I'm doing that with a react-photonkit "theme"
// #flow
import styled from 'styled-components';
const PhotonStyledButton = styled.button`
font-family: Arial, Roboto, Helvetica, sans-serif;
height: 30px;
display: inline-block;
padding: 6px 12px;
margin-bottom: 0;
font-size: 12px !important;
line-height: 1.4;
text-align: center;
white-space: nowrap;
vertical-align: middle;
cursor: default;
background-image: none;
border: 1px solid transparent;
border-radius: $default-border-radius;
box-shadow: 0 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.06);
-webkit-app-region: no-drag;
&:focus {
outline: none;
box-shadow: none;
}
color: #333;
border-top-color: #c2c0c2;
border-right-color: #c2c0c2;
border-bottom-color: #a19fa1;
border-left-color: #c2c0c2;
background-color: #fcfcfc;
background-image: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0%,#fcfcfc), color-stop(100%,#f1f1f1));
background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #fcfcfc 0%, #f1f1f1 100%);
background-image: linear-gradient(to bottom, #fcfcfc 0%, #f1f1f1 100%);
&:active {
background-color: #ddd;
background-image: none;
}
`;
export default PhotonStyledButton;

Answer 2

styled-components in general is compatible with any component library. When you write styled(AnotherComponent) we take that component and inject an automatically generated class name. This means essentially it's the same thing as writing <AnotherComponent className="sc-asdf123" />!
The current version of material-ui specifically is a bit difficult to custom style because it uses inline styles. From the MaterialUI documentation:
Note that CSS properties defined inline are given priority over those defined in a CSS class. You need to use !important to take precedence over the inline style.
This means simply using styled(MaterialButton) won't work as the passed-in styles will mostly just be ignored. You need to bump the specificity of your styles to override the inline styles that material-ui ships with. (this article is a great primer on specificity if you're not familiar with the details)
Answer for the alpha version of material-ui
The current alpha version of material-ui has switched to using JSS under the hood. (which is CSS in JS not inline styles, like styled-components) This means the issue is likely to be that the styled-components styles are injected after the default material-ui styles. (which are injected by JSS)
JSS supports custom injection points so you might be able to add a <!-- jss --> comment to the HEAD of your HTML to make sure JSS injects its CSS before the styled-components injected CSS?
Answer for the current version of material-ui
There are two ways to bump the specificity of the styled-components injected styles, one more tedious and one a bit more "hacky". The first one is adding !important at the end of all of your styles:
const Button = styled(MaterialButton)`
color: blue!important;
`
While this works in most cases it gets tedious very fast when you have lots of custom styling in a component. The better way is to use the class name hack:
const Button = styled(MaterialButton)`
&&& {
color: blue;
}
`
These ampersands get replaced with the automatically generated class name meaning the outputted CSS looks something like this:
.sc-asdf123.sc-asdf123.sc-asdf123 {
color: blue;
}
This bumps specificity by a big margin, thusly overriding the defined inline styles, and is less annoying than having to put !important after each rule.

Answer 3

Now we can use <!-- material-ui --> to make sure the styles are injected after it.
By default, Material-UI will look for a html comment named to inject styles after. By adjusting the placement of this comment within your HTML body you can control the order that CSS rules are applied to your components. (ref)