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Creating a Spacer Component

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Programming

I think the first time I really considered using a Spacer or Stack component was when I read Margin considered harmful (opens in a new tab) and later Let’s Bring Spacer GIFs Back! (opens in a new tab). If you think this is useful for you, read on.

I want to explain how to create a Spacer component in plain React, Chakra UI (opens in a new tab), and vanilla-extract (opens in a new tab). You can probably adapt the code to to your styling solution if you don’t use any of those three.

vanilla-extract

For this example I didn’t want to install any third-party/additional packages for vanilla-extract. So it uses its CSS custom properties API.

spacer.tsx
import React from "react"
import { type SpacerScale, spacerVariants } from "./spacer.css"


export const Spacer = ({
  size,
  axis,
  ...rest
}: {
  size: SpacerScale
  axis: "horizontal" | "vertical"
}) => <span data-axis={axis} className={spacerVariants[size]} {...rest} />
spacer.css.ts
import { style, styleVariants, createVar } from "@vanilla-extract/css"


export type SpacerScale = "sm" | "md" | "lg"


const spacerScales = {
  sm: "12px",
  md: "16px",
  lg: "24px",
}


const size = createVar()


const base = style({
  display: "block",
  vars: {
    [size]: spacerScales.md,
  },
})


export const spacerVariants = styleVariants(spacerScales, (scale) => [
  base,
  {
    vars: {
      [size]: scale,
    },
    selectors: {
      "&[data-axis='vertical']": {
        width: "1px",
        minWidth: "1px",
        height: size,
        minHeight: size,
      },
      "&[data-axis='horizontal']": {
        width: size,
        minWidth: size,
        height: "1px",
        minHeight: "1px",
      },
    },
  },
])

You could also use dessert-box (opens in a new tab) and create Atoms with Sprinkles (opens in a new tab). Then it would look like this:

import * as React from "react"
import { Box } from "./box"
import { Atoms } from "./atoms.css"


interface ISpacerProps extends Atoms {
  size: Atoms["width"]
  axis: "vertical" | "horizontal"
}


export const Spacer = ({ size, axis, ...rest }: ISpacerProps) => {
  const width = axis === `vertical` ? `px` : size
  const height = axis === `horizontal` ? `px` : size
  return (
    <Box
      as="span"
      width={width}
      height={height}
      minWidth={width}
      minHeight={height}
      display="block"
      {...rest}
    />
  )
}

Plain React

You can pass in any number here as there are no style tokens and type-safety on which numbers to use.

Plain React
import React from "react"

type SpacerProps = {
  axis: "vertical" | "horizontal"
  size: number
}

export const Spacer = ({ size, axis, ...rest }: SpacerProps) => {
  const width = axis === "vertical" ? "1px" : size
  const height = axis === "horizontal" ? "1px" : size

  return (
    <span
      style={{
        display: "block",
        width,
        minWidth: width,
        height,
        minHeight: height,
      }}
      {...rest}
    />
  )
}
Result

Chakra UI

You’ll be using Chakra UI’s built-in scale for the spacing props (coming from width). So size will be a defined list of numbers or tokens like xl.

Chakra UI
import React from "react"
import { Box, BoxProps } from "@chakra-ui/react"

interface ISpacerProps extends BoxProps {
  size: BoxProps["width"]
  axis: "vertical" | "horizontal"
}

export const Spacer = ({ size, axis, ...rest }: ISpacerProps) => {
  const width = axis === "vertical" ? "1px" : size
  const height = axis === "horizontal" ? "1px" : size
  return (
    <Box
      as="span"
      width={width}
      height={height}
      minWidth={width}
      minHeight={height}
      display="block"
      {...rest}
    />
  )
}
Result
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