Posted on Sep 23 Tailwind CSS has gained popularity among front-end developers due to its utility-first approach and flexibility. It allows developers to build modern and responsive user interfaces with ease and speed.When combined with React JS, Tailwind CSS becomes an even more potent tool for creating visually appealing and efficient web applications.This tutorial will guide you through the step-by-step process of setting up Tailwind CSS in a React project using Visual Studio Code (VS Code). By the end of this guide, you will have a fully functional React application with Tailwind CSS integrated and ready for deployment.Before we begin, ensure that you have the following installed on your system:To set up a React application, you need Node.js and npm installed on your computer. Download and install the latest LTS version of NodeJS from the official Node.js website.To download the latest version of npm, on the command line, run the following command:VS Code is a popular code editor that provides a seamless development experience for developers. You can download it for free from the official VS Code website and install it on your computer.Vite is a better alternative to CRA (create-react-app). It provides a faster and leaner development experience for modern web projects built with React, Angular, or Vue. Vite is popularly known for speed, efficiency, lightweight, and simplicity. Learn more about Vite here.To install a React application using Vite, open your terminal or command prompt and navigate to the root directory where you want to install the React project. Then, run the following command to create a new applicationYou will be asked in the terminal to write the name of the project. For the sake of this tutorial, I will be going with "tailwind-setup" as the project name.Thereafter, you will be asked to select a framework to work with. Select React.You will be asked to select a variant. Select JavaScript.Afterward, navigate to the project directory using the command cd project-name. Since the name of this project is tailwind-setup, we will enter the project directory and execute the following commands.Enter the project directoryRun npm install to install the necessary packages and dependencies for the React project.After installing the packages and dependencies, you need to open VS Code editor with the current directory. To do that, run the command belowA new window will be opened up and you will be able to access the project files from the side bar (also known as the Explorer). When you want to install Tailwind in React, you have to remember that you installed this React project with Vite. To avoid dependency issues, you must install Tailwind for Vite React. You will find the installation guide on Tailwind Docs. The first installation guide (Tailwind CLI) on the docs points to general installation. Click on (Framework Guides) This will show you a list of frameworks to pick from. Select Vite.You will be brought to this pageYou already have React installed using Vite, so we just have to install Tailwindcss and its peer dependencies with the command:Then generate your tailwind.config.js and postcss.config.js files with the command below:Add the paths to all of your template files in your tailwind.config.js file. You can do that by copying the template available in the config file on the docs. It's also provided below:To import Tailwind CSS into your project. Open the "src/index.css" file, which is the main CSS file for your React application. Remove all the existing code in the file and add the following import statement to include Tailwind CSS:Now that Tailwind CSS is integrated into your React project, it's time to start the development server and see the changes in action.Run your build process with npm run dev in the terminal.This will start the development server, and you can access your React application in the local host server address provided in the terminal: If you are not a Tailwind expert yet, you can easily look up the class names for any CSS property you need on an element by searching for it on the docs.Let us style a h1 element and a paragraph element in the App.jsx file of our React application.To give the h1 text a yellow color, you go on to Tailwind DocsGo to the tailwind docs, you will see a search bar on the left side bar on the docs page, search for text color, on the results, click on text color and then go through the lists of colors made available to you to choose, I will go with text-red-600.Copy the class name and apply it to the h1 elementTo make the paragraph underlined, search for underline on the docs,Apply it to the paragraph element:Note: Elements should be styled according to the design requirements of your project.You now have a powerful combination of React's component-based architecture and Tailwind CSS's utility-first approach at your disposal. This combination allows you to create visually appealing and responsive web applications with speed and efficiency.Happy coding!!!Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. Are you sure you want to hide this comment? It will become hidden in your post, but will still be visible via the comment's permalink. Hide child comments as well Confirm For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse Muhammed Shameel Maravan - Sep 23 Vinamra Sulgante - Sep 23 My Nguyen - Sep 23 Christian Lechner - Sep 23 Once suspended, david_bilsonn will not be able to comment or publish posts until their suspension is removed. Once unsuspended, david_bilsonn will be able to comment and publish posts again. Once unpublished, all posts by david_bilsonn will become hidden and only accessible to themselves. If david_bilsonn is not suspended, they can still re-publish their posts from their dashboard. 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