How to use Bootstrap in React Using a React Library

By Chimdia Anyiam

Web Developer

Introduction

React is one of the most popular javascript frontend frameworks out there and its popularity does not come as a surprise as it is very flexible to use. Bootstrap on the other hand is an open-source CSS framework that features many templates for user interface components such as cards and modals.

In this article, we will be making use of these two frameworks alongside a react library to create a simple landing page. The library we’ll be making use of is CDBReact which is an Elegant UI kit that has reusable components for building mobile-first, responsive websites, and web apps.

Prerequisites

The Landing page would be built with React, Bootstrap, and CDBReact. You don’t need to have any previous knowledge of CDBReact.

Basic React Knowledge
Basic Bootstrap knowledge
- Node and its package manager, npm. You can install it from. Run the command node -v && npm -v to verify you have them installed.
Alternatively, we can use another package manager,.

This is an image of the Landing page that we will build.

Setup

First Check that you have the node installed. To do this, run the following code

bash

node - v;

If you don’t have node.js installed, download it here

Installing node also installs npm on your PC but you can still confirm using

bash

npm -v.

Now that we have node installed, we can start up our React project by going to the directory of our choice and running

bash

npx create-react-app landing-page

I chose a landing page for the name of my project but you can use whatever you want.

Install cdbreact

Now, we have to install cdbreact in our project

bash

npm install --save cdbreact

Or using Yarn

bash

yarn add cdbreact

Note that we don't need to install bootstrap or add it anywhere in our project as CDBReact does that for us upon installation.

Also, Install React router because it is required by the Navbar we’ll be creating.

npm install react-router-dom

Now run npm start to make sure that everything runs smoothly

Now let’s proceed to create a navbar for our landing page. Create a file named Navbar. Import Navbar and other components we will be using from cdbreact

import React, { useState } from 'react';

import {
  CDBBtn,
  CDBNavbar,
  CDBNavBrand,
  CDBNavbarNav,
  CDBNavToggle,
  CDBNavItem,
  CDBNavLink,
  CDBCollapse,
} from 'cdbreact';

After that, add the following code for the navbar.

const Navbar = () => {
  const [collapse, setCollapse] = useState(false);

  return (
    <header
      className="page-header"
      style={{ width: '60%', margin: '0 auto', 'max-width': '1320px' }}
    >
      <CDBNavbar className="navigation bg-transparent p-0" expand="md" dark scrolling>
        <CDBNavBrand href="/">
          <img alt="logo" src="/logo192.png" width="25px" />
        </CDBNavBrand>

        <CDBNavToggle
          onClick={() => {
            setCollapse(!collapse);
          }}
        />

        <CDBCollapse id="navbarCollapse1" delay="0" isOpen={collapse} navbar>
          <CDBNavbarNav>
            <CDBNavItem active>
              <CDBBtn flat className="p-2 border-0 bg-transparent">
                <CDBNavLink to="#">Home</CDBNavLink>
              </CDBBtn>
            </CDBNavItem>

            <CDBNavItem>
              <CDBBtn flat className="p-2 border-0 bg-transparent">
                <CDBNavLink to="#">Resources</CDBNavLink>
              </CDBBtn>
            </CDBNavItem>

            <CDBNavItem>
              <CDBBtn flat className="p-2 border-0 bg-transparent">
                <CDBNavLink to="#">Blog</CDBNavLink>
              </CDBBtn>
            </CDBNavItem>

            <CDBNavItem>
              <CDBBtn flat className="p-2 border-0 bg-transparent">
                <CDBNavLink to="#">Contact</CDBNavLink>
              </CDBBtn>
            </CDBNavItem>

            <CDBNavItem>
              <CDBBtn flat className="p-2 border-0 bg-transparent">
                <CDBNavLink to="#">Support</CDBNavLink>
              </CDBBtn>
            </CDBNavItem>
          </CDBNavbarNav>
        </CDBCollapse>
      </CDBNavbar>
    </header>
  );
};

export default Navbar;

From the piece of code above, we imported the necessary components from cdbreact and then we also created a collapsed state that will be used by the navbar to know when it is open or not. We can notice some bootstrap classes such as p-2 and border-0 being used in the styling of the navbar.

Let’s import the Navbar into our App.js and also include our router from react-router-dom.

import './App.css';

import Navbar from './Navbar';

import { BrowserRouter as Router } from 'react-router-dom';

function App() {
  return (
    <Router>
      <div className="App">
        <Navbar />
      </div>
    </Router>
  );
}

export default App;

Now let's edit our App.css file to give our page a black background color

CSSCSS

.App {
  background-color: black;
}

After this, your navbar should appear like in the image below.

Now let's move on to creating the rest of the page.

Landing Component

Create a new file called landing.js and in it, create a component called landing, also create a landing.css file that would be used for styling.

In your Landing.js, add the following code

import React from 'react';

import './landing.css';

import { CDBBtn } from 'cdbreact';

const Landing = () => {
  return (
    <section className="page-head d-flex align-items-center text-right text-white">
      <img alt="landing" src="/landing.png" className="image" />

      <div className="page-info">
        <p className="page-title font-weight-bold ml-auto">Creativity is but skin deep</p>

        <p className="my-4">
          Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Fugit, error amet numquam iure
          provident voluptate esse quasi, veritatis totam voluptas nostrum quisquam eum porro a
          pariatur accusamus veniam.
        </p>

        <CDBBtn flat style={{ background: '#8080ff', border: '2px #8080ff solid' }}>
          Start Now
        </CDBBtn>
      </div>
    </section>
  );
};

export default Landing;

Here we import the landing.css file, we also import CDBBtn component from CDBReact, and then use several bootstrap classes such as d-flex, align-items-center, and my-4 for styling. Also notice that we can pass custom styles to CDBReact components as we did to CDBBtn above.

Also, add the following to your landing.css file.

css

.page-head {
  margin: 5rem auto 0 auto;
  width: 80%;
}

.page-head .image {
  width: 50%;
  max-width: 550px;
}

.page-info {
  width: 50%;
  text-align: right;
}

.page-title {
  font-size: 3em;
  max-width: 350px;
}

.page-info .btn {
  max-width: 200px;
}

Then import the landing component into your App.js file, to make it look like this:

import './App.css';

import Navbar from './Navbar';

import { BrowserRouter as Router } from 'react-router-dom';

import Landing from './landing';

function App() {
  return (
    <Router>
      <div className="App">
        <Navbar />
        <Landing />
      </div>
    </Router>
  );
}

export default App;

Now your landing page should be ready and look like the image below.

Congratulations, you have successfully built a landing page using react, bootstrap and CDBReact. Easy isn’t it? Pairing these tools can help you create awesome web pages that look beautiful in no time.

Resources

CDBReact docs

Bootstrap docs

Link to code on github

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