How to Merge Class Names in Tailwind and React

React and Tailwind CSS are popular technologies used to develop modern web applications. While Tailwind CSS is used as a CSS framework, React is used as a JavaScript library to build user interfaces. By combining these two technologies, you can take advantage of Tailwind’s features to make designing user interfaces easier.

When combining Tailwind and React, you may experience class name collisions. To prevent this, there are several methods for combining class names. One of them is the clsx library. The clsx function combines all inputted class names and returns a single string as output.

To combine Tailwind CSS and React class names, you can use a library called tailwind-merge. This library provides a twMerge function to combine Tailwind class names with other class names.

In the code below, we define a utility function called cn. This function combines React and Tailwind class names using the clsx and twMerge functions.

1. clsx can be installed using npm or yarn. Open your terminal and run one of the following commands:

• For npm: npm install clsx
• For Yarn: yarn add clsx

1. tailwind-merge can also be installed using npm or yarn. Run one of the following commands in your terminal:

• For npm: npm install tailwind-merge
• For Yarn: yarn add tailwind-merge

Once both packages are installed, you can use them in your React project. In the code you provided, clsx and twMerge are imported from their respective packages using the following lines:

import { ClassValue, clsx } from 'clsx'
import { twMerge } from 'tailwind-merge'

export const cn = (...inputs: ClassValue[]) => {
  return twMerge(clsx(inputs))
}

To use this function, you can call the cn function anywhere you want to combine class names in your React components. For example, in the code below, we combine the btn and bg-red-500 class names:

import React from 'react'
import cn from './utils/cn'

const Button = () => {
  return (
    <button className={cn('btn', 'bg-red-500')}>
      Click me
    </button>
  )
}

export default Button

In this example, btn may be a pre-defined class name in React components while bg-red-500 is a class name defined in Tailwind CSS. The cn function combines these two class names to create the result of btn bg-red-500 class name.

In conclusion, you can easily combine React and Tailwind class names using the cn utility function. This method helps to prevent collisions between class names and create more readable and manageable code.