Toggle theme using React Hooks

I was trying to implement the Dark mode to one of the application which I was working. Most of the examples available in Internet uses either styled-components or any other css-in-js concepts. The application which I’m working on doesn’t have the css-in-js yet. So I want to keep it very simple. Hence, the very first thing that came up is to use React’s Context API. Why Context? As per the react documentation:

Context provides a way to pass data through the component tree without having to pass props down manually at every level.

Yes, the definition is very self explanatory. We don’t have to pass the props to every component and down the component tree. Think of this maintains a global state.

To create a context object, we should use React’s createContext method and pass the default value to it (i.e., initial state).

const ThemeContext = React.createContext(initialState)

The ThemeContext object contains a ThemeContext.Provider component, so that the children component can consume the changes / state.

We’ve pretty much covered the basic of what we need to do further. Let’s build the application which can toggle between light and dark mode. Please note that once I toggle to a particular mode, next time I visit the application, it should retain the same mode. That is, if I toggled to Light mode, next time I visit, it should display the application in Light mode only. So we’ll be using the localStorage to persist the theme selected.

Create a react app:

create-react-app my-app
cd my-app
npm start

Open it in your favorite editor.

Create a file called theme-context.js under src directory.

const themes = {
  dark: {
    backgroundColor: 'black',
    color: 'white'
  },
  light: {
    backgroundColor: 'white',
    color: 'black'
  }
}

I’m keeping it simple. I’m maintaining two theme types dark and light with some simple background and foreground colors respectively. So if I toggled to dark mode, then I should my page’s backgound color is changed to black and foreground color to white and if light, the other way around.

Next, let me put in my initial state to put it in createContext.

const initialState = {
  dark: false,
  theme: themes.light,
  toggle: () => {}
}
const ThemeContext = React.createContext(initialState)

Then, let’s create a method which wraps all children with ThemeContext.Provider component and export this method and the actual ThemeContext object that we created just before.

function ThemeProvider({ children }) {
  const [dark, setDark] = React.useState(false) // Default theme is light

  // On mount, read the preferred theme from the persistence
  React.useEffect(() => {
    const isDark = localStorage.getItem('dark') === 'true'
    setDark(isDark)
  }, [dark])

  // To toggle between dark and light modes
  const toggle = () => {
    const isDark = !dark
    localStorage.setItem('dark', JSON.stringify(isDark))
    setDark(isDark)
  }

  // Filter the styles based on the theme selected
  const theme = dark ? themes.dark : themes.light

  return (
    <ThemeContext.Provider value={{ theme, dark, toggle }}>
      {children}
    </ThemeContext.Provider>
  )
}

export { ThemeProvider }

So the final theme-context.js look like this:

import React from 'react'

const themes = {
  dark: {
    backgroundColor: 'black',
    color: 'white'
  },
  light: {
    backgroundColor: 'white',
    color: 'black'
  }
}

const initialState = {
  dark: false,
  theme: themes.light,
  toggle: () => {}
}
const ThemeContext = React.createContext(initialState)

function ThemeProvider({ children }) {
  const [dark, setDark] = React.useState(false) // Default theme is light

  // On mount, read the preferred theme from the persistence
  React.useEffect(() => {
    const isDark = localStorage.getItem('dark') === 'true'
    setDark(isDark)
  }, [dark])

  // To toggle between dark and light modes
  const toggle = () => {
    const isDark = !dark
    localStorage.setItem('dark', JSON.stringify(isDark))
    setDark(isDark)
  }

  const theme = dark ? themes.dark : themes.light

  return (
    <ThemeContext.Provider value={{ theme, dark, toggle }}>
      {children}
    </ThemeContext.Provider>
  )
}

export { ThemeProvider, ThemeContext }

Open index.js and wrap the App component with our ThemeProvider. So that the theme state can be shared with all the children available within App component.

The modified index.js look like:

import React from 'react'
import ReactDOM from 'react-dom'
import './index.css'
import App from './App'
import * as serviceWorker from './serviceWorker'
import { ThemeProvider } from './theme-context'

ReactDOM.render(
  <ThemeProvider>
    <App />
  </ThemeProvider>,
  document.getElementById('root')
)

// If you want your app to work offline and load faster, you can change
// unregister() to register() below. Note this comes with some pitfalls.
// Learn more about service workers: https://bit.ly/CRA-PWA
serviceWorker.unregister()

Let’s go to App.js and add the following before the return statement:

const { theme, toggle, dark } = React.useContext(ThemeContext)

The useContext is the React’s Hook api which is equivalent to ThemeContext.Consumer component. Read more about it here.

Then add a button before the <img> tag to toggle the theme:

<button
  type="button"
  onClick={toggle}
  style={{
    backgroundColor: theme.backgroundColor,
    color: theme.color,
    outline: 'none'
  }}
>
  Toggle to {!dark ? 'Dark' : 'Light'} theme
</button>

Now in the header tag, add the following attribute:

style={{ backgroundColor: theme.backgroundColor, color: theme.color }}

Take a look at your application (mostly it should be running at http://localhost:3000). You can see the background color changed to white and the foreground color in black.

Click on the button to toggle between Dark and Light mode. You can close and re-open the tab or open a new tab of the same application, the theme mode is persisted.

The entire code of App.js:

import React from 'react'
import logo from './logo.svg'
import './App.css'
import { ThemeContext } from './theme-context'

function App() {
  const { theme, toggle, dark } = React.useContext(ThemeContext)

  return (
    <div className="App">
      <header
        className="App-header"
        style={{ backgroundColor: theme.backgroundColor, color: theme.color }}
      >
        <button
          type="button"
          onClick={toggle}
          style={{
            backgroundColor: theme.backgroundColor,
            color: theme.color,
            outline: 'none'
          }}
        >
          Toggle to {!dark ? 'Dark' : 'Light'} theme
        </button>
        <img src={logo} className="App-logo" alt="logo" />
        <p>
          Edit <code>src/App.js</code> and save to reload.
        </p>
        <a
          className="App-link"
          href="https://reactjs.org"
          target="_blank"
          rel="noopener noreferrer"
        >
          Learn React
        </a>
      </header>
    </div>
  )
}

export default App

Demo: