TypeScript

✏️ Edit this page

Emotion includes TypeScript definitions for @emotion/react and @emotion/styled. These definitions infer types for css properties with the object syntax, HTML/SVG tag names, and prop types.

@emotion/react

The easiest way to use the css prop with TypeScript is with the new JSX transform and the jsxImportSource TSConfig option (available since TS 4.1). For this approach, your TSConfig compilerOptions should contain

"jsx": "react-jsx",
"jsxImportSource": "@emotion/react"

For most users, this is all the setup that is required. You can now define styles using the object syntax or template literal syntax and pass them to your components via the css prop.

import { css } from '@emotion/react'

const titleStyle = css({
  boxSizing: 'border-box',
  width: 300,
  height: 200
})

const subtitleStyle = css`
  box-sizing: border-box;
  width: 100px;
  height: 60px;
`

Object styles are recommended since they are type checked with the help of the csstype package. For example, the following code will emit an error.

import { css } from '@emotion/react';

const titleStyle = css({
                       ^ Argument of type 'boxSizing: 'bordre-box';' is not assignable [...]
  boxSizing: 'bordre-box', // Oops, there's a typo!
  width: 300,
  height: 200,
});

When using our JSX factory, TypeScript only allows the css prop on components that accept a className prop. This is because @emotion/react resolves the value of the css prop to a class name and then passes this class name down to the rendered component.

With the Babel plugin

@emotion/babel-plugin is completely optional for TypeScript users. If you are not already using Babel, you probably shouldn't add it to your build tooling unless you truly need one of the features offered by @emotion/babel-plugin. On the other hand, there's no reason not to use @emotion/babel-plugin if you are already using Babel to transpile your TypeScript code.

With the old JSX transform

If you are unable to upgrade to the react-jsx transform, you will need to specify the JSX factory at the top of every file:

/** @jsx jsx */
import { jsx } from '@emotion/react'

As a result, you may be not able to use the shorthand syntax <></> for React fragments, but you can still use <Fragment></Fragment>. This is a limitation of the TypeScript compiler not being able to independently specify jsx pragma and jsxFrag pragma.

You can still use the css helper and pass the className yourself (ensure you are importing from the @emotion/css package, not @emotion/react).

import { css } from '@emotion/css'

const el = <div className={css({ background: 'black' })} />

It's not possible to leverage css prop support being added conditionally based on the type of a rendered component when not using our jsx pragma or the react-jsx transform. If you use our pragma implicitly (for example when using our @emotion/babel-preset-css-prop) we have a special file that can be imported once to add support for the css prop globally, for all components. Use it like this:

/// <reference types="@emotion/react/types/css-prop" />

@emotion/styled

@emotion/styled works with TypeScript without any additional configuration.

HTML/SVG elements

import styled from '@emotion/styled'

const Link = styled('a')`
  color: red;
`

const Icon = styled('svg')`
  stroke: green;
`

const App = () => <Link href="#">Click me</Link>

import styled from '@emotion/styled';

const NotALink = styled('div')`
  color: red;
`;

const App = () => (
  <NotALink href="#">Click me</NotALink>
            ^^^^^^^^ Property 'href' does not exist [...]
);

`withComponent`

import styled from '@emotion/styled'

const NotALink = styled('div')`
  color: red;
`

const Link = NotALink.withComponent('a')

const App = () => <Link href="#">Click me</Link>

// No errors!

Passing Props

You can type the props of styled components.

import styled from '@emotion/styled'

type ImageProps = {
  src: string
  width: number
}

// Using a css block
const Image0 = styled.div<ImageProps>`
  width: ${props => props.width};
  background: url(${props => props.src}) center center;
  background-size: contain;
`
const Image0 = styled('div')<ImageProps>`
  width: ${props => props.width};
  background: url(${props => props.src}) center center;
  background-size: contain;
`

// Or with object styles
const Image1 = styled('div')<ImageProps>(
  {
    backgroundSize: 'contain'
  },
  props => ({
    width: props.width,
    background: `url(${props.src}) center center`
  })
)

React Components

Emotion can also style React components and will infer component props as expected.

import React, { FC } from 'react'
import styled from '@emotion/styled'

interface ComponentProps {
  className?: string
  label: string
}

const Component: FC<ComponentProps> = ({ label, className }) => (
  <div className={className}>{label}</div>
)

const StyledComponent0 = styled(Component)`
  color: ${props => (props.label === 'Important' ? 'red' : 'green')};
`

const StyledComponent1 = styled(Component)({
  color: 'red'
})

const App = () => (
  <div>
    <StyledComponent0 label="Important" />
    <StyledComponent1 label="Yea! No need to re-type this label prop." />
  </div>
)

Forwarding props

Sometimes you want to wrap an existing component and override the type of a prop. Emotion allows you to specify a shouldForwardProp hook to filter properties which should be passed to the wrapped component.

If you make shouldForwardProp a type guard then only the props from the type guard will be exposed.

For example:

const Original: React.FC<{ prop1: string; prop2: string }> = () => null

interface StyledOriginalExtraProps {
  // This prop would conflict with the `prop2` on Original
  prop2: number
}
const StyledOriginal = styled(Original, {
  // Filter prop2 by only forwarding prop1
  shouldForwardProp: (propName): propName is 'prop1' => propName === 'prop1'
})<StyledOriginalExtraProps>(props => {
  // props.prop2 will be `number`
  return {}
})

// No more type conflict error
;<StyledOriginal prop1="1" prop2={2} />

Passing props when styling a React component

import React, { FC } from 'react'
import styled from '@emotion/styled'

interface ComponentProps {
  className?: string
  label: string
}

const Component: FC<ComponentProps> = ({
  label,
  className
}) => <div className={className}>{label}</div>

interface StyledComponentProps {
  bgColor: string
}

const StyledComponent0 = styled(Component)<StyledComponentProps>`
  color: red;
  background: ${props => props.label ? props.bgColor : 'white'};
`
// or
const StyledComponent1 = styled(Component)<StyledComponentProps>(
  props => ({
    color: 'red'
    background: props.label ? props.bgColor : 'white'
  })
)

const App = () => (
  <div>
    <StyledComponent0
      bgColor="red"
      label="Some cool text"
    />
    <StyledComponent1
      bgColor="red"
      label="Some more cool text"
    />
  </div>
)

Define a Theme

By default, props.theme is an empty object because it's the only thing that is type-safe as a default. You can define a theme type by extending our type declarations via your own declarations file.

emotion.d.ts

import '@emotion/react'

declare module '@emotion/react' {
  export interface Theme {
    color: {
      primary: string
      positive: string
      negative: string
    }
  }
}

// You are also able to use a 3rd party theme this way:
import '@emotion/react'
import { LibTheme } from 'some-lib'

declare module '@emotion/react' {
  export interface Theme extends LibTheme {}
}

Button.tsx

import styled from '@emotion/styled'

const Button = styled('button')`
  padding: 20px;
  background-color: ${props => props.theme.someLibProperty};
  border-radius: 3px;
`

export default Button

If you were previously relying on theme being an any type, you can restore compatibility with:

emotion.d.ts

import '@emotion/react'

declare module '@emotion/react' {
  export interface Theme extends Record<string, any> {}
}