How to easily inspect styled-components using dev tools?

Question

I am using styled-components in a React project. When the components are rendered in the browser they are assigned a randomly generated classname, for example:

<div class="sc-KSdffgy oPwefl">

This class name does not help me identify from which component the <div> came from, so is there a way to do this easily?

P.s. currently I am adding attrs to my styled components so that I can recognise them in dev tools, for example:

const Foo = styled.div.attrs({
   'data-id': 'foo'
})`
    ...
`;

Saintsimon

Answer 1

That's exactly why we created our Babel plugin, when using it you'll get class names that include the name you gave your component:

<div class="Sidebar__Button-KSdffgy oPwefl">

On top of that we set the displayName of the generated component too, which means in your React DevTools you'll see the actual component name rather than just <div> or <Styled(Component)>.

To use the Babel plugin install it with npm install --save-dev babel-plugin-styled-components and then add it to your Babel configuration: (e.g. in your .babelrc)

plugins: ["styled-components"]

That's it! Happy debugging 😊

---

Note that if you're using create-react-app you cannot change the Babel configuration. I use and would recommend react-app-rewired to be able to change configurations without having to eject. We've also built react-app-rewire-styled-components which automatically integrates the styled-components Babel plugin for you!

Stonecutter

This is great, but I was also wondering - is there a way to also see the props passed to the Styled Component? For example, let's say I have a <Text primary>...</Text>, I'd like to see the primary in devtools but at the moment it's a randomly generated classname as well. – Fibrilliform

For anyone Googling, the Webpack config here was what I needed to get nicer looking classes for debugging purposes: styled-components.com/docs/tooling#minification – Comenius

awesome answer, that helped me a lot thanks! – Tryptophan

Answer 2

For anyone using create-react-app, just substitute

import styled from "styled-components";

to

import styled from "styled-components/macro";

this will make your styled-component classes have the name of their component in them. And you'll be able to know which classes refer to which components just by looking at their class name ;)

Wivinia

@tif it literally solves the problem so yeah. great contribution, thanks! – Furnace

Thanks for updating the question @n-joppi – Aerostation

Doesn't work for me... – Aron

This does not work anymore. – Collectivism

Yes but you have to change the import everywhere. What do you do in a large project? – Cho

Answer 3

For anyone using create-react-app, another option is to use the styled components babel macro

1. npm install --save babel-plugin-macros
2. Inside your component use import styled from 'styled-components/macro'; instead of import styled from 'styled-components';

You should now see the component name in your dev tools:

Ascetic

Doesn't work to me – Gristede

Answer 4

I was looking at doing the same and stumbled on the following as an alternative to attrs:

const Section = styled.div`
  background-color: #06183d;
  color: white;
  padding: 16px;
  margin-top: 16px;
  ${breakpoint("md")`
    border-radius: 5px;
  `}
`

Section.defaultProps = {
  "data-id": "Section"
}

Use React.Component's defaultProps. It keeps the call to styled.div cleaner and should be easier to remove if needed.

Results in:

Bessie

Works great! I created a simple snippet to make it more convenient. "prefix": "cy", "body": [ "$CLIPBOARD.defaultProps = { \"data-styled-id\": \"$CLIPBOARD\" };" ]. Basically it gets the id from the clipboard. – Gristede

Answer 5

In Next 13 adding this to next.config.js worked:

compiler: {
    styledComponents: true
},

Figurate

Answer 6

If you use ts-loader or awesome-typescript-loader there is typescript-plugin-styled-components.

Perdue