Building a React application from scratch can be a time-consuming and challenging task, especially when it comes to styling components. That’s where Blueprint UI Toolkit comes in handy. The toolkit is a set of reusable UI components that can help you create consistent and visually appealing interfaces for your React applications.
Learn about the basics of the Blueprint UI Toolkit and how to use it to build a simple React application.
What Is Blueprint UI Toolkit?
Blueprint UI Toolkit is aReact UI component library.It contains a collection of pre-made components that are easy to use and customize. You can use these pre-designed components out of the box or modify them to fit your specific needs.
Blueprint UI Toolkit’s components include Buttons, Forms, Modals, Navigation, and Tables. Using these components can save you time and effort since you don’t have to design and build each component from scratch.
Getting Started With Blueprint UI Toolkit
To get started with Blueprint UI Toolkit, you’ll need tocreate a React application.
Once your project is set up, you can install Blueprint UI Toolkit using any Node package installer you choose. To install Blueprint UI Toolkit using npm, run the following command in your terminal:
To use yarn instead, run this command:
Once you’ve installed Blueprint UI Toolkit, you can use the components of your choice in your React application.
Using Blueprint UI Toolkit Components
Before using the components, include the CSS files from Blueprint UI Toolkit:
Adding the code block above to your CSS file applies the Blueprint UI styles to its components.
For example, to add a button to your application, use theButtoncomponent from Blueprint UI Toolkit:
This code block adds a button to your application using theButtoncomponent. TheButtoncomponent takes props such asintent,text,icon,small, andlarge.
Theintentprop defines the nature of the button, which reflects in its background color. In this example, the button has asuccessintent which gives it a green background color. Blueprint UI offers several core intents includingprimary(blue),success(green),warning(orange), anddanger(red).
You can specify the text that appears inside the button with thetextprop. You can also add icons to the button using theiconprop. Alongside theiconprop is therightIconprop, which adds the icon to the right side of the button.
Lastly, thelargeandsmallboolean props specify the size of the button. Thelargeprop makes the button larger, while thesmallprop makes it smaller.
The earlier code block will generate a button that looks like this:
you may also use theAnchorButtoncomponent to create a button in your application. TheAnchorButtoncomponent is a specialized version of the Button component explicitly designed for use as a link.
This component accepts many of the same props as the Button component, includingtext,large,small,intent, andicon. It also accepts thehrefandtargetprops.
Thehrefprop specifies the URL the button links to, and thetargetprop specifies the target window or frame for the link:
This code block above renders anAnchorButtoncomponent. The component’shrefprop value is “https://example.com/” and thetargetprop value is “_blank” which means the link will open in another browser tab or window.
Another essential component of the Blueprint UI Toolkit is theCardcomponent. This is a reusable component that displays information in an appealing visual manner.
The Card component takes two propsinteractiveandelevation. Theelevationprop controls the shadow depth of the card, with higher values producing a more prominent shadow effect.
Theinteractiveprop accepts a boolean value. When set to true, it enables hover and click interactions on the card, allowing it to respond to user input.
For example:
In this example, theCardcomponent has a title and some content. Theinteractiveprop is set totrue.
You also import theElevationcomponent from@blueprintjs/core. TheElevationcomponent is an enum that defines a set of predefined values you can use to set a component’s shadow depth.
Here are the available values of theElevationenum:
Rendering the code block above will display an image on your screen that looks like this:
Customizing Blueprint UI Toolkit Components
Blueprint UI Toolkit components are easy to customize.you’re able to use traditional CSSto modify the appearance of the components, or you can use the props provided to change their behavior.
For example, you can customize the appearance of a button by passing in aclassNameprop:
The code block above applies a custom class to the button, allowing you to modify its appearance using CSS:
Applying these styles will cause your button to look a bit like this:
There’s Much More to Blueprint UI
Blueprint UI offers more components than mentioned above, such as Alert, Popover, toast, etc. However, with the information provided, you can build a simple React application using Blueprint UI.
You can style your React application using different methods. You can use traditional CSS, SASS/SCSS, Tailwind CSS, and CSS in JS libraries such as emotion, styled components, etc.
