cristianbote
cristianbote
goober
JavaScript

🥜 goober, a less than 1KB 🎉 css-in-js alternative with a familiar API

Last updated Jul 5, 2026
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#critical-css#css#css-in-js#dom#emotion#goober#javascript#preact#react#ssr#styled#styled-components#vanilla
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JavaScript 95.4%
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README

goober

🥜 goober, a less than 1KB css-in-js solution.

Backers on Open Collective Sponsors on Open Collective

version status gzip size downloads coverage Slack

🪒 The Great Shave Off Challenge

Can you shave off bytes from goober? Do it and you're gonna get paid! More info here

Motivation

I've always wondered if you could get a working solution for css-in-js with a smaller footprint. While I was working on a side project I wanted to use styled-components, or more accurately the styled pattern. Looking at the JavaScript bundle sizes, I quickly realized that I would have to include ~12kB(styled-components) or ~11kB(emotion) just so I can use the styled paradigm. So, I embarked on a mission to create a smaller alternative for these well established APIs.

Why the peanuts emoji?

It's a pun on the tagline.

css-in-js at the cost of peanuts!
🥜goober

Talks and Podcasts

Table of contents

- Browser - SSR - styled - setup - With prefixer - With theme - With forwardProps - css - targets - extractCss - createGlobalStyles - keyframes - shouldForwardProp - Babel Plugin - Babel Macro Plugin - Next.js - Gatsby - Preact CLI Plugin - CSS Prop - Sharing Style - Autoprefixer - TypeScript - Content Security Policy (CSP)-

Usage

The API is inspired by emotion styled function. Meaning, you call it with your tagName, and it returns a vDOM component for that tag. Note, setup needs to be ran before the styled function is used.

import { h } from 'preact';
import { styled, setup } from 'goober';

// Should be called here, and just once setup(h);


const Icon = styled('span')     display: flex;     flex: 1;     color: red; ;


const Button = styled('button')     background: dodgerblue;     color: white;     border: ${Math.random()}px solid white;


&:focus,     &:hover {         padding: 1em;     }


.otherClass {         margin: 0;     }


${Icon} {         color: black;     } ;

Examples

Comparison and tradeoffs

In this section I would like to compare goober, as objectively as I can, with the latest versions of two most well known css-in-js packages: styled-components and emotion.

I've used the following markers to reflect the state of each feature:

  • ✅ Supported
  • 🟡 Partially supported
  • 🛑 Not supported
Here we go:

| Feature name | Goober | Styled Components | Emotion | | ---------------------- | ------- | ----------------- | ------- | | Base bundle size | 1.25 kB | 12.6 kB | 7.4 kB | | Framework agnostic | ✅ | 🛑 | ✅ *3 | | Render with target *1 | ✅ | 🛑 | 🛑 | | css api | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | css prop | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | styled | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | styled.<tag> | ✅ *2 | ✅ | ✅ | | default export | 🛑 | ✅ | ✅ | | as | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | .withComponent | 🛑 | ✅ | ✅ | | .attrs | 🛑 | ✅ | 🛑 | | shouldForwardProp | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | keyframes | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Labels | 🛑 | 🛑 | ✅ | | ClassNames | 🛑 | 🛑 | ✅ | | Global styles | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | SSR | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Theming | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Tagged Templates | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Object styles | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | | Dynamic styles | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |

Footnotes

  • [1] goober can render in any dom target. Meaning you can use goober to define scoped styles in any context. Really useful for web-components.
  • [2] Supported only via babel-plugin-transform-goober
  • [3] Emotion has a framework-agnostic css function. See https://emotion.sh/docs/@emotion/css

SSR

You can get the critical CSS for SSR via extractCss. Take a look at this example: CodeSandbox: SSR with Preact and goober and read the full explanation for extractCSS and targets below.

Benchmarks

The results are included inside the build output as well.

Browser

Coming soon!

SSR

The benchmark is testing the following scenario:

import styled from '<packageName>';

// Create the dynamic styled component const Foo = styled('div')((props) => ({     opacity: props.counter > 0.5 ? 1 : 0,     '@media (min-width: 1px)': {         rule: 'all'     },     '&:hover': {         another: 1,         display: 'space'     } }));


// Serialize the component renderToString(<Foo counter={Math.random()} />);

The results are:

goober x 200,437 ops/sec ±1.93% (87 runs sampled)
styled-components@5.2.1 x 12,650 ops/sec ±9.09% (48 runs sampled)
emotion@11.0.0 x 104,229 ops/sec ±2.06% (88 runs sampled)

Fastest is: goober

API

As you can see, goober supports most of the CSS syntax. If you find any issues, please submit a ticket, or open a PR with a fix.

styled(tagName: String | Function, forwardRef?: Function)

  • @param {String|Function} tagName The name of the DOM element you'd like the styles to be applied to
  • @param {Function} forwardRef Forward ref function. Usually React.forwardRef
  • @returns {Function} Returns the tag template function.
import { styled } from 'goober';

const Btn = styled('button')     border-radius: 4px; ;

Different ways of customizing the styles

Tagged templates functions
import { styled } from 'goober';

const Btn = styled('button')     border-radius: ${(props) =&gt; props.size}px; ;


<Btn size={20} />;

Function that returns a string
import { styled } from 'goober';

const Btn = styled('button')(     (props) =>    border-radius: ${props.size}px;  );


<Btn size={20} />;

JSON/Object
import { styled } from 'goober';

const Btn = styled('button')((props) => ({     borderRadius: props.size + 'px' }));


<Btn size={20} />;

Arrays
import { styled } from 'goober';

const Btn = styled('button')([     { color: 'tomato' },     ({ isPrimary }) => ({ background: isPrimary ? 'cyan' : 'gray' }) ]);


<Btn />; // This will render the Button with background: gray; <Btn isPrimary />; // This will render the Button with background: cyan;

Forward ref function

As goober is JSX library agnostic, you need to pass in the forward ref function for the library you are using. Here's how you do it for React.

const Title = styled('h1', React.forwardRef)
    font-weight: bold;
    color: dodgerblue;
;

setup(pragma: Function, prefixer?: Function, theme?: Function, forwardProps?: Function)

The call to setup() should occur only once. It should be called in the entry file of your project.

Given the fact that react uses createElement for the transformed elements and preact uses h, setup should be called with the proper pragma function. This was added to reduce the bundled size and being able to bundle an esmodule version. At the moment, it's the best tradeoff I can think of.

import React from 'react';
import { setup } from 'goober';

setup(React.createElement);

With prefixer

import React from 'react';
import { setup } from 'goober';

const customPrefixer = (key, value) => ${key}: ${value};\n;


setup(React.createElement, customPrefixer);

With theme

import React, { createContext, useContext, createElement } from 'react';
import { setup, styled } from 'goober';

const theme = { primary: 'blue' }; const ThemeContext = createContext(theme); const useTheme = () => useContext(ThemeContext);


setup(createElement, undefined, useTheme);


const ContainerWithTheme = styled('div')     color: ${(props) =&gt; props.theme.primary}; ;

With forwardProps

The forwardProps function offers a way to achieve the same shouldForwardProps functionality as emotion and styled-components (with transient props) offer. The difference here is that the function receives the whole props and you are in charge of removing the props that should not end up in the DOM.

This is a super useful functionality when paired with theme object, variants, or any other customisation one might need.

import React from 'react';
import { setup, styled } from 'goober';

setup(React.createElement, undefined, undefined, (props) => {     for (let prop in props) {         // Or any other conditions.         // This could also check if this is a dev build and not remove the props         if (prop === 'size') {             delete props[prop];         }     } });

The functionality of "transient props" (with a "\$" prefix) can be implemented as follows:

import React from 'react';
import { setup, styled } from 'goober';

setup(React.createElement, undefined, undefined, (props) => {     for (let prop in props) {         if (prop[0] === '$') {             delete props[prop];         }     } });

Alternatively you can use goober/should-forward-prop addon to pass only the filter function and not have to deal with the full props object.

import React from 'react';
import { setup, styled } from 'goober';
import { shouldForwardProp } from 'goober/should-forward-prop';

setup(     React.createElement,     undefined,     undefined,     // This package accepts a filter function. If you return false that prop     // won't be included in the forwarded props.     shouldForwardProp((prop) => {         return prop !== 'size';     }) );

css(taggedTemplate)

  • @returns {String} Returns the className.
To create a className, you need to call css with your style rules in a tagged template. 
import { css } from "goober";

const BtnClassName = css   border-radius: 4px; ;


// vanilla JS const btn = document.querySelector("#btn"); // BtnClassName === 'g016232' btn.classList.add(BtnClassName);


// JSX // BtnClassName === 'g016232' const App => <button className={BtnClassName}>click</button>

Different ways of customizing css

Passing props to css tagged templates
import { css } from 'goober';

// JSX const CustomButton = (props) => (     <button         className={css             border-radius: ${props.size}px;         }     >         click     </button> );

Using css with JSON/Object
import { css } from 'goober';
const BtnClassName = (props) =>
    css({
        background: props.color,
        borderRadius: props.radius + 'px'
    });

Notice: using css with object can reduce your bundle size.

We can also declare styles at the top of the file by wrapping css into a function that we call to get the className.

import { css } from 'goober';

const BtnClassName = (props) => css     border-radius: ${props.size}px; ;


// vanilla JS // BtnClassName({size:20}) -> g016360 const btn = document.querySelector('#btn'); btn.classList.add(BtnClassName({ size: 20 }));


// JSX // BtnClassName({size:20}) -> g016360 const App = () => <button className={BtnClassName({ size: 20 })}>click</button>;

The difference between calling css directly and wrapping into a function is the timing of its execution. The former is when the component(file) is imported, the latter is when it is actually rendered.

If you use extractCSS for SSR, you may prefer to use the latter, or the styled API to avoid inconsistent results.

targets

By default, goober will append a style tag to the <head> of a document. You might want to target a different node, for instance, when you want to use goober with web components (so you'd want it to append style tags to individual shadowRoots). For this purpose, you can .bind a new target to the styled and css methods:

import * as goober from 'goober';
const target = document.getElementById('target');
const css = goober.css.bind({ target: target });
const styled = goober.styled.bind({ target: target });

If you don't provide a target, goober always defaults to <head> and in environments without a DOM (think certain SSR solutions), it will just use a plain string cache to store generated styles which you can extract with extractCSS(see below).

extractCss(target?)

  • @returns {String}
Returns the <style> tag that is rendered in a target and clears the style sheet. Defaults to <head>. 
const { extractCss } = require('goober');

// After your app has rendered, just call it: const styleTag = &lt;style id=&quot;_goober&quot;&gt;${extractCss()}&lt;/style&gt;;


// Note: To be able to hydrate the styles you should use the proper id so goober can pick it up and use it as the target from now on

createGlobalStyles

To define your global styles you need to create a GlobalStyles component and use it as part of your tree. The createGlobalStyles is available at goober/global addon.

import { createGlobalStyles } from 'goober/global';

const GlobalStyles = createGlobalStyles   html,    body {     background: light;   }


* {     box-sizing: border-box;   } ;


export default function App() {     return (         <div id="root">             <GlobalStyles />             <Navigation>             <RestOfYourApp>         </div>     ) }

How about using glob function directly?

Before the global addon, goober/global, there was a method named glob that was part of the main package that would do the same thing, more or less. Having only that method to define global styles usually led to missing global styles from the extracted css, since the pattern did not enforce the evaluation of the styles at render time. The glob method is still exported from goober/global, in case you have a hard dependency on it. It still has the same API:

import { glob } from 'goober';

glob   html,    body {     background: light;   }


* {     box-sizing: border-box;   } ;

keyframes

keyframes is a helpful method to define reusable animations that can be decoupled from the main style declaration and shared across components.

import { keyframes } from 'goober';

const rotate = keyframes     from, to {         transform: rotate(0deg);     }


50% {         transform: rotate(180deg);     } ;


const Wicked = styled('div')     background: tomato;     color: white;     animation: ${rotate} 1s ease-in-out; ;

shouldForwardProp

To implement the shouldForwardProp without the need to provide the full loop over props you can use the goober/should-forward-prop addon.

import { h } from 'preact';
import { setup } from 'goober';
import { shouldForwardProp } from 'goober/should-forward-prop';

setup(     h,     undefined,     undefined,     shouldForwardProp((prop) => {         // Do NOT forward props that start with $ symbol         return prop['0'] !== '$';     }) );

Integrations

Babel plugin

You're in love with the styled.div syntax? Fear no more! We got you covered with a babel plugin that will take your lovely syntax from styled.tag and translate it to goober's styled("tag") call.

npm i --save-dev babel-plugin-transform-goober

or

yarn add --dev babel-plugin-transform-goober

Visit the package in here for more info (https://github.com/cristianbote/goober/tree/master/packages/babel-plugin-transform-goober)

Babel macro plugin

A babel-plugin-macros macro for [🥜goober][goober], rewriting styled.div syntax to styled('div') calls.

Usage

Once you've configured babel-plugin-macros, change your imports from goober to goober/macro.

Now you can create your components using styled.* syntax:.

import { styled } from 'goober/macro';

const Button = styled.button     margin: 0;     padding: 1rem;     font-size: 1rem;     background-color: tomato; ;

Next.js

Want to use goober with Next.js? We've got you covered! Follow the example below or from the main examples directory.

npx create-next-app --example with-goober with-goober-app

or

yarn create next-app --example with-goober with-goober-app

Gatsby

Want to use goober with Gatsby? We've got you covered! We have our own plugin to deal with styling your Gatsby projects.

npm i --save goober gatsby-plugin-goober

or

yarn add goober gatsby-plugin-goober

Preact CLI plugin

If you use Goober with Preact CLI, you can use preact-cli-goober-ssr

npm i --save-dev preact-cli-goober-ssr

or

yarn add --dev preact-cli-goober-ssr

preact.config.js

const gooberPlugin = require('preact-cli-goober-ssr')

export default (config, env) => {   gooberPlugin(config, env) }

When you build your Preact application, this will run extractCss on your pre-rendered pages and add critical styles for each page.

CSS Prop

You can use a custom css prop to pass in styles on HTML elements with this Babel plugin.

Installation:

npm install --save-dev @agney/babel-plugin-goober-css-prop

List the plugin in .babelrc:

{
  "plugins": [
    "@agney/babel-plugin-goober-css-prop"
  ]
}

Usage:

<main
    css={
        display: flex;
        min-height: 100vh;
        justify-content: center;
        align-items: center;
    }
>
    <h1 css="color: dodgerblue">Goober</h1>
</main>

Features

  • [x] Basic CSS parsing
  • [x] Nested rules with pseudo selectors
  • [x] Nested styled components
  • [x] Extending Styles
  • [x] Media queries (@media)
  • [x] Keyframes (@keyframes)
  • [x] Smart (lazy) client-side hydration
  • [x] Styling any component
- via ` const Btn = ({className}) => {...}; const TomatoBtn = styled(Btn)color: tomato;
  • [x] Vanilla (via css function)
  • [x] globalStyle (via glob) so one would be able to create global styles
  • [x] target/extract from elements other than
  • [x] vendor prefixing

Content Security Policy (CSP)

goober supports Content Security Policy nonces for inline styles. Set window.nonce before loading the library:

<pre><code class="lang-js"></code></pre>

The nonce will be added to goober's