Material UI ::before

Material UI is a popular React UI library that provides a set of beautiful and functional UI components for web development. One of its useful features is the ability to customize the appearance of these components using CSS pseudo-elements, such as ::before and ::after.

In Material UI, the ::before pseudo-element is used to add content before the content of a component. This content can be an icon, a text label, or anything you want to display before the element. To use the ::before pseudo-element in Material UI, you need to access the component's style object and add a ':before' property to it.

Here is an example of using ::before to add an icon before a button component:

import React from 'react';
import Button from '@material-ui/core/Button';
import { makeStyles } from '@material-ui/core/styles';
import ShoppingCartIcon from '@material-ui/icons/ShoppingCart';

const useStyles = makeStyles({
  root: {
    position: 'relative',
  },
  before: {
    content: '""',
    position: 'absolute',
    left: 0,
    top: 0,
    bottom: 0,
    display: 'flex',
    alignItems: 'center',
    paddingLeft: '10px',
  },
});

export default function BeforeButton() {
  const classes = useStyles();
  return (
    <Button className={classes.root}>
      <span className={classes.before}>
        <ShoppingCartIcon />
      </span>
      Add to Cart
    </Button>
  );
}

In the above code snippet, we define a BeforeButton component that uses the Button component from Material UI. We also define a useStyles function that returns an object containing styles for our button component. The '.before' property is added to the style object to add the ::before pseudo-element. This '.before' property positions the content absolutely and aligns it to the left of the button.

Finally, we render the BeforeButton component with the Button component, and we add a span element with a '.before' class before the button's label. The ShoppingCartIcon component inside the span element will be displayed before the button's label.

Using the ::before pseudo-element in Material UI provides an easy and powerful way to customize the appearance of components. With this technique, you can add icons, labels, or other types of content to components and make them more useful and engaging.