prop-types vs styled-components vs emotion vs react-with-styles vs react-style-proptype vs react-jss
CSS-in-JS Libraries and Prop Validation Comparison
1 Year
prop-typesstyled-componentsemotionreact-with-stylesreact-style-proptypereact-jssSimilar Packages:
What's CSS-in-JS Libraries and Prop Validation?

These libraries focus on styling components in React applications and validating props passed to components. They provide various methodologies for applying styles, managing CSS, and ensuring that components receive the correct data types, enhancing maintainability and readability in React applications. Each library has its unique approach to styling and prop validation, catering to different developer preferences and project requirements.

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prop-types39,175,0134,48594.5 kB60-MIT
styled-components7,193,15040,8471.77 MB321a month agoMIT
emotion948,201---5 years agoMIT
react-with-styles552,1991,702-324 years agoMIT
react-style-proptype478,48358-147 years agoMIT
react-jss329,8567,091811 kB2212 years agoMIT
Feature Comparison: prop-types vs styled-components vs emotion vs react-with-styles vs react-style-proptype vs react-jss

Styling Approach

  • prop-types:

    PropTypes does not handle styling; it focuses solely on validating the types of props passed to components, ensuring that the right data types are used, which can prevent bugs during development.

  • styled-components:

    Styled-Components allows you to write CSS directly within your JavaScript files, creating styled components that encapsulate styles and logic. It supports dynamic styling based on props and themes, making it powerful for complex applications.

  • emotion:

    Emotion allows you to write styles with a CSS-like syntax and also supports object styles. It provides both styled components and a css prop for inline styles, making it versatile for different use cases.

  • react-with-styles:

    React-with-styles abstracts the styling logic into higher-order components, allowing for a consistent styling approach across different platforms. It can manage styles for both client-side and server-side rendering.

  • react-style-proptype:

    This library is specifically designed to validate style props, ensuring that the styles passed to components are valid JavaScript objects. It does not provide styling capabilities but focuses on prop validation.

  • react-jss:

    React-JSS uses a JavaScript object syntax for styling, which is similar to traditional CSS but allows for dynamic styling based on props and state. It integrates well with the JSS library, providing a familiar API for CSS developers.

Performance

  • prop-types:

    PropTypes has minimal performance overhead since it only checks prop types during development. It does not affect runtime performance in production, making it lightweight for prop validation.

  • styled-components:

    Styled-Components can have performance implications due to its runtime CSS generation, but it includes optimizations like style deduplication and server-side rendering support to mitigate these issues.

  • emotion:

    Emotion is optimized for performance with its style injection mechanism, which minimizes the amount of CSS generated and improves load times. It also supports server-side rendering, enhancing performance for initial page loads.

  • react-with-styles:

    React-with-styles can introduce some performance overhead due to its higher-order component nature, but it is designed to be efficient and works well with server-side rendering, ensuring styles are applied correctly.

  • react-style-proptype:

    As a validation library, React-Style-PropType has negligible performance impact since it only validates styles at runtime. It does not contribute to the rendering performance of components.

  • react-jss:

    React-JSS provides good performance with its JSS engine, which generates CSS on the fly and can optimize styles based on usage. However, it may introduce some overhead compared to static CSS files.

Theming Support

  • prop-types:

    PropTypes does not offer theming capabilities as it is focused on prop validation and does not handle styles or themes.

  • styled-components:

    Styled-Components has extensive theming support, enabling you to create theme providers that allow components to access theme variables easily, making it ideal for large applications with complex styling needs.

  • emotion:

    Emotion provides built-in theming support, allowing you to define a theme and access it within your styled components. This makes it easy to create consistent styles across your application.

  • react-with-styles:

    React-with-styles includes theming capabilities, allowing you to define themes and apply them consistently across your application, which is beneficial for maintaining a cohesive design.

  • react-style-proptype:

    This library does not provide theming support as it is solely focused on validating style props and does not manage styles or themes.

  • react-jss:

    React-JSS supports theming through its theming API, allowing you to create a theme object that can be accessed in your styles, promoting consistency across components.

Learning Curve

  • prop-types:

    PropTypes is straightforward and easy to learn, making it an excellent choice for developers who need quick prop validation without a steep learning curve.

  • styled-components:

    Styled-Components is generally easy to learn, especially for those with a background in CSS. Its syntax is intuitive, but mastering advanced features like theming and global styles may require additional practice.

  • emotion:

    Emotion has a moderate learning curve, especially if you are familiar with CSS-in-JS concepts. Its API is intuitive, but understanding advanced features like theming and dynamic styles may take some time.

  • react-with-styles:

    React-with-styles may require some time to understand its higher-order component approach, but once familiar, it provides a powerful way to manage styles across different environments.

  • react-style-proptype:

    This library is simple to use, with a low learning curve focused on validating style props. It is easy to integrate into existing projects without much overhead.

  • react-jss:

    React-JSS has a moderate learning curve, particularly for those new to JSS syntax. However, developers familiar with CSS will find it relatively easy to grasp.

Community and Ecosystem

  • prop-types:

    PropTypes is a well-established library with a strong community, but it is relatively simple and does not have a large ecosystem of plugins or extensions.

  • styled-components:

    Styled-Components boasts a large and active community, with a wealth of resources, tutorials, and third-party integrations available, making it one of the most popular CSS-in-JS libraries.

  • emotion:

    Emotion has a growing community and ecosystem, with many resources, plugins, and integrations available, making it a popular choice among developers.

  • react-with-styles:

    React-with-styles has a niche community, primarily used in projects that require consistent styling across different environments, but it may not have as extensive an ecosystem as other libraries.

  • react-style-proptype:

    This library has a smaller community, as it focuses specifically on style prop validation. It may not have as many resources or plugins as larger libraries.

  • react-jss:

    React-JSS has a dedicated community and is part of the JSS ecosystem, which includes various plugins and tools for enhancing styling capabilities.

How to Choose: prop-types vs styled-components vs emotion vs react-with-styles vs react-style-proptype vs react-jss
  • prop-types:

    Use PropTypes if you need a simple solution for validating the types of props in your React components. It is lightweight and easy to integrate, making it suitable for small to medium-sized projects where type checking is needed but TypeScript is not used.

  • styled-components:

    Use Styled-Components if you prefer a popular and widely adopted CSS-in-JS library that allows you to write actual CSS code to style your components. It supports theming, global styles, and has a large community and ecosystem.

  • emotion:

    Choose Emotion if you want a powerful CSS-in-JS library that offers both styled components and the ability to write CSS styles inline. It provides excellent performance with its optimized style injection and supports theming and dynamic styles.

  • react-with-styles:

    Choose React-with-styles if you want a higher-order component approach to styling that allows for a consistent styling solution across different rendering environments. It is beneficial for projects that require server-side rendering or theming capabilities.

  • react-style-proptype:

    Select React-Style-PropType if you want to enforce style prop validation in your components. This library is particularly useful for ensuring that style objects passed as props are valid, which can help prevent runtime errors in styling.

  • react-jss:

    Opt for React-JSS if you prefer a CSS-in-JS solution that is built around the JSS library. It allows for a more traditional CSS-like syntax and is great for projects that require a more structured approach to styling with the benefits of JavaScript.

README for prop-types

prop-types Build Status

Runtime type checking for React props and similar objects.

You can use prop-types to document the intended types of properties passed to components. React (and potentially other libraries—see the checkPropTypes() reference below) will check props passed to your components against those definitions, and warn in development if they don’t match.

Installation

npm install --save prop-types

Importing

import PropTypes from 'prop-types'; // ES6
var PropTypes = require('prop-types'); // ES5 with npm

CDN

If you prefer to exclude prop-types from your application and use it globally via window.PropTypes, the prop-types package provides single-file distributions, which are hosted on the following CDNs:

<!-- development version -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/prop-types@15.6/prop-types.js"></script>

<!-- production version -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/prop-types@15.6/prop-types.min.js"></script>
<!-- development version -->
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/prop-types/15.6.0/prop-types.js"></script>

<!-- production version -->
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/prop-types/15.6.0/prop-types.min.js"></script>

To load a specific version of prop-types replace 15.6.0 with the version number.

Usage

PropTypes was originally exposed as part of the React core module, and is commonly used with React components. Here is an example of using PropTypes with a React component, which also documents the different validators provided:

import React from 'react';
import PropTypes from 'prop-types';

class MyComponent extends React.Component {
  render() {
    // ... do things with the props
  }
}

MyComponent.propTypes = {
  // You can declare that a prop is a specific JS primitive. By default, these
  // are all optional.
  optionalArray: PropTypes.array,
  optionalBigInt: PropTypes.bigint,
  optionalBool: PropTypes.bool,
  optionalFunc: PropTypes.func,
  optionalNumber: PropTypes.number,
  optionalObject: PropTypes.object,
  optionalString: PropTypes.string,
  optionalSymbol: PropTypes.symbol,

  // Anything that can be rendered: numbers, strings, elements or an array
  // (or fragment) containing these types.
  // see https://reactjs.org/docs/rendering-elements.html for more info
  optionalNode: PropTypes.node,

  // A React element (ie. <MyComponent />).
  optionalElement: PropTypes.element,

  // A React element type (eg. MyComponent).
  // a function, string, or "element-like" object (eg. React.Fragment, Suspense, etc.)
  // see https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/HEAD/packages/shared/isValidElementType.js
  optionalElementType: PropTypes.elementType,

  // You can also declare that a prop is an instance of a class. This uses
  // JS's instanceof operator.
  optionalMessage: PropTypes.instanceOf(Message),

  // You can ensure that your prop is limited to specific values by treating
  // it as an enum.
  optionalEnum: PropTypes.oneOf(['News', 'Photos']),

  // An object that could be one of many types
  optionalUnion: PropTypes.oneOfType([
    PropTypes.string,
    PropTypes.number,
    PropTypes.instanceOf(Message)
  ]),

  // An array of a certain type
  optionalArrayOf: PropTypes.arrayOf(PropTypes.number),

  // An object with property values of a certain type
  optionalObjectOf: PropTypes.objectOf(PropTypes.number),

  // You can chain any of the above with `isRequired` to make sure a warning
  // is shown if the prop isn't provided.

  // An object taking on a particular shape
  optionalObjectWithShape: PropTypes.shape({
    optionalProperty: PropTypes.string,
    requiredProperty: PropTypes.number.isRequired
  }),

  // An object with warnings on extra properties
  optionalObjectWithStrictShape: PropTypes.exact({
    optionalProperty: PropTypes.string,
    requiredProperty: PropTypes.number.isRequired
  }),

  requiredFunc: PropTypes.func.isRequired,

  // A value of any data type
  requiredAny: PropTypes.any.isRequired,

  // You can also specify a custom validator. It should return an Error
  // object if the validation fails. Don't `console.warn` or throw, as this
  // won't work inside `oneOfType`.
  customProp: function(props, propName, componentName) {
    if (!/matchme/.test(props[propName])) {
      return new Error(
        'Invalid prop `' + propName + '` supplied to' +
        ' `' + componentName + '`. Validation failed.'
      );
    }
  },

  // You can also supply a custom validator to `arrayOf` and `objectOf`.
  // It should return an Error object if the validation fails. The validator
  // will be called for each key in the array or object. The first two
  // arguments of the validator are the array or object itself, and the
  // current item's key.
  customArrayProp: PropTypes.arrayOf(function(propValue, key, componentName, location, propFullName) {
    if (!/matchme/.test(propValue[key])) {
      return new Error(
        'Invalid prop `' + propFullName + '` supplied to' +
        ' `' + componentName + '`. Validation failed.'
      );
    }
  })
};

Refer to the React documentation for more information.

Migrating from React.PropTypes

Check out Migrating from React.PropTypes for details on how to migrate to prop-types from React.PropTypes.

Note that this blog posts mentions a codemod script that performs the conversion automatically.

There are also important notes below.

How to Depend on This Package?

For apps, we recommend putting it in dependencies with a caret range. For example:

  "dependencies": {
    "prop-types": "^15.5.7"
  }

For libraries, we also recommend leaving it in dependencies:

  "dependencies": {
    "prop-types": "^15.5.7"
  },
  "peerDependencies": {
    "react": "^15.5.0"
  }

Note: there are known issues in versions before 15.5.7 so we recommend using it as the minimal version.

Make sure that the version range uses a caret (^) and thus is broad enough for npm to efficiently deduplicate packages.

For UMD bundles of your components, make sure you don’t include PropTypes in the build. Usually this is done by marking it as an external (the specifics depend on your bundler), just like you do with React.

Compatibility

React 0.14

This package is compatible with React 0.14.9. Compared to 0.14.8 (which was released in March of 2016), there are no other changes in 0.14.9, so it should be a painless upgrade.

# ATTENTION: Only run this if you still use React 0.14!
npm install --save react@^0.14.9 react-dom@^0.14.9

React 15+

This package is compatible with React 15.3.0 and higher.

npm install --save react@^15.3.0 react-dom@^15.3.0

What happens on other React versions?

It outputs warnings with the message below even though the developer doesn’t do anything wrong. Unfortunately there is no solution for this other than updating React to either 15.3.0 or higher, or 0.14.9 if you’re using React 0.14.

Difference from React.PropTypes: Don’t Call Validator Functions

First of all, which version of React are you using? You might be seeing this message because a component library has updated to use prop-types package, but your version of React is incompatible with it. See the above section for more details.

Are you using either React 0.14.9 or a version higher than React 15.3.0? Read on.

When you migrate components to use the standalone prop-types, all validator functions will start throwing an error if you call them directly. This makes sure that nobody relies on them in production code, and it is safe to strip their implementations to optimize the bundle size.

Code like this is still fine:

MyComponent.propTypes = {
  myProp: PropTypes.bool
};

However, code like this will not work with the prop-types package:

// Will not work with `prop-types` package!
var errorOrNull = PropTypes.bool(42, 'myProp', 'MyComponent', 'prop');

It will throw an error:

Calling PropTypes validators directly is not supported by the `prop-types` package.
Use PropTypes.checkPropTypes() to call them.

(If you see a warning rather than an error with this message, please check the above section about compatibility.)

This is new behavior, and you will only encounter it when you migrate from React.PropTypes to the prop-types package. For the vast majority of components, this doesn’t matter, and if you didn’t see this warning in your components, your code is safe to migrate. This is not a breaking change in React because you are only opting into this change for a component by explicitly changing your imports to use prop-types. If you temporarily need the old behavior, you can keep using React.PropTypes until React 16.

If you absolutely need to trigger the validation manually, call PropTypes.checkPropTypes(). Unlike the validators themselves, this function is safe to call in production, as it will be replaced by an empty function:

// Works with standalone PropTypes
PropTypes.checkPropTypes(MyComponent.propTypes, props, 'prop', 'MyComponent');

See below for more info.

If you DO want to use validation in production, you can choose to use the development version by importing/requiring prop-types/prop-types instead of prop-types.

You might also see this error if you’re calling a PropTypes validator from your own custom PropTypes validator. In this case, the fix is to make sure that you are passing all of the arguments to the inner function. There is a more in-depth explanation of how to fix it on this page. Alternatively, you can temporarily keep using React.PropTypes until React 16, as it would still only warn in this case.

If you use a bundler like Browserify or Webpack, don’t forget to follow these instructions to correctly bundle your application in development or production mode. Otherwise you’ll ship unnecessary code to your users.

PropTypes.checkPropTypes

React will automatically check the propTypes you set on the component, but if you are using PropTypes without React then you may want to manually call PropTypes.checkPropTypes, like so:

const myPropTypes = {
  name: PropTypes.string,
  age: PropTypes.number,
  // ... define your prop validations
};

const props = {
  name: 'hello', // is valid
  age: 'world', // not valid
};

// Let's say your component is called 'MyComponent'

// Works with standalone PropTypes
PropTypes.checkPropTypes(myPropTypes, props, 'prop', 'MyComponent');
// This will warn as follows:
// Warning: Failed prop type: Invalid prop `age` of type `string` supplied to
// `MyComponent`, expected `number`.

PropTypes.resetWarningCache()

PropTypes.checkPropTypes(...) only console.errors a given message once. To reset the error warning cache in tests, call PropTypes.resetWarningCache()

License

prop-types is MIT licensed.