---
title: Recipes
description: Writing multi-variant styles with recipes in Chakra.
---

## Overview

Chakra provides a way to write CSS-in-JS with better performance, developer
experience, and composability. One of its key features is the ability to create
multi-variant styles with a type-safe runtime API.

A recipe consists of these properties:

- `className`: The className to attach to the component
- `base`: The base styles for the component
- `variants`: The different visual styles for the component
- `compoundVariants`: The different combinations of variants for the component
- `defaultVariants`: The default variant values for the component

## Defining the recipe

Use the `defineRecipe` identity function to create a recipe.

```tsx title="button.recipe.ts"
import { defineRecipe } from "@chakra-ui/react"

export const buttonRecipe = defineRecipe({
  base: {
    display: "flex",
  },
  variants: {
    visual: {
      solid: { bg: "red.200", color: "white" },
      outline: { borderWidth: "1px", borderColor: "red.200" },
    },
    size: {
      sm: { padding: "4", fontSize: "12px" },
      lg: { padding: "8", fontSize: "24px" },
    },
  },
})
```

## Using the recipe

There are two ways to use the recipe in a component:

- Directly in the component with `useRecipe`
- Creating a component (recommended) with the `chakra` factory

:::info

**RSC Tip:** Adding the `"use client"` directive is required since it relies on
react hooks like `useContext` and `useInsertionEffect` under the hood.

:::

### Directly in component

Use the `useRecipe` hook to get the recipe for a component. Then, call the
recipe with its variant props to get the styles.

```tsx title="button.tsx" {9}
"use client"

import { chakra, useRecipe } from "@chakra-ui/react"
import { buttonRecipe } from "./button.recipe"

export const Button = (props) => {
  const { visual, size, ...restProps } = props

  const recipe = useRecipe({ recipe: buttonRecipe })
  const styles = recipe({ visual, size })

  return <chakra.button css={styles} {...restProps} />
}
```

#### splitVariantProps

Notice how the `visual` and `size` props were destructured from the props to be
passed to the recipe. A smarter approach would be to automatically split the
recipe props from the component props.

To do that, use the `recipe.splitVariantProps` function to split the recipe
props from the component props.

```tsx title="button.tsx" {8}
"use client"

import { chakra, useRecipe } from "@chakra-ui/react"
import { buttonRecipe } from "./button.recipe"

export const Button = (props) => {
  const recipe = useRecipe({ recipe: buttonRecipe })
  const [recipeProps, restProps] = recipe.splitVariantProps(props)
  const styles = recipe(recipeProps)

  // ...
}
```

#### TypeScript

To infer the recipe variant prop types, use the `RecipeVariantProps` type
helper.

```tsx title="button.tsx"
import type { RecipeVariantProps } from "@chakra-ui/react"
import { buttonRecipe } from "./button.recipe"

type ButtonVariantProps = RecipeVariantProps<typeof buttonRecipe>

export interface ButtonProps
  extends React.PropsWithChildren<ButtonVariantProps> {}
```

### Creating a component

Use the `chakra` function to create a component from a recipe.

> **Note:** The recipe can also be inlined into the `chakra` function.

```tsx title="button.tsx"
"use client"

import { chakra } from "@chakra-ui/react"
import { buttonRecipe } from "./button.recipe"

export const Button = chakra("button", buttonRecipe)
```

Next, use the component and pass recipe properties to it.

```tsx title="app.tsx"
import { Button } from "./button"

const App = () => {
  return (
    <Button visual="solid" size="lg">
      Click Me
    </Button>
  )
}
```

## Default Variants

The `defaultVariants` property is used to set the default variant values for the
recipe. This is useful when you want to apply a variant by default.

```tsx title="button.tsx" {19-22}
"use client"

import { chakra } from "@chakra-ui/react"

const Button = chakra("button", {
  base: {
    display: "flex",
  },
  variants: {
    visual: {
      solid: { bg: "red.200", color: "white" },
      outline: { borderWidth: "1px", borderColor: "red.200" },
    },
    size: {
      sm: { padding: "4", fontSize: "12px" },
      lg: { padding: "8", fontSize: "24px" },
    },
  },
  defaultVariants: {
    visual: "solid",
    size: "lg",
  },
})
```

## Compound Variants

Use the `compoundVariants` property to define a set of variants that are applied
based on a combination of other variants.

```tsx title="button.tsx" /compoundVariants/
"use client"

import { chakra } from "@chakra-ui/react"

const button = cva({
  base: {
    display: "flex",
  },
  variants: {
    visual: {
      solid: { bg: "red.200", color: "white" },
      outline: { borderWidth: "1px", borderColor: "red.200" },
    },
    size: {
      sm: { padding: "4", fontSize: "12px" },
      lg: { padding: "8", fontSize: "24px" },
    },
  },
  compoundVariants: [
    {
      size: "small",
      visual: "outline",
      css: {
        borderWidth: "2px",
      },
    },
  ],
})
```

When you use the `size="small"` and `visual="outline"` variants together, the
`compoundVariants` will apply the `css` property to the component.

```tsx title="app.tsx"
<Button size="small" visual="outline">
  Click Me
</Button>
```

### Caveat

Due to the design constraints, using `compoundVariants` with responsive values
doesn't work.

This means a code like this will not work:

```tsx
<Button size={{ base: "sm", md: "lg" }} visual="outline">
  Click Me
</Button>
```

For this cases, we recommend rendering multiple versions of the component with
different breakpoints, then hide/show as needed.

## Theme Usage

To use the recipe in a reusable manner, move it to the system theme and add it
to `theme.recipes` property.

```tsx title="theme.ts"
import { createSystem, defaultConfig, defineConfig } from "@chakra-ui/react"
import { buttonRecipe } from "./button.recipe"

const config = defineConfig({
  theme: {
    recipes: {
      button: buttonRecipe,
    },
  },
})

export default createSystem(defaultConfig, config)
```

### TypeScript

Use the CLI to generate the types for the recipe.

```bash
npx @chakra-ui/cli typegen ./theme.ts
```

Then, import the generated types in your component.

```tsx title="button.tsx"
import type { RecipeVariantProps } from "@chakra-ui/react"
import { buttonRecipe } from "./button.recipe"

type ButtonVariantProps = RecipeVariantProps<typeof buttonRecipe>

export interface ButtonProps
  extends React.PropsWithChildren<ButtonVariantProps> {}
```

### Update code

If you use the recipe directly in your component, update the `useRecipe` to use
the `key` property to get the recipe from the theme.

```diff title="button.tsx"
const Button = () => {
-  const recipe = useRecipe({ recipe: buttonRecipe })
+  const recipe = useRecipe({ key: "button" })
  // ...
}
```