React Toastify : The complete guide.

In this guide we will start with the basics for creating toast notification and step by step move on to creating complex notifications and exploring the full capabilities of the React Toastify library

Here is the run up on what we are going to learn in this article

1. What are Toast Notifications?
2. What is react Toastify?
3. Installing react Toastify
4. Creating a basic toast notification
5. Types of Toast Messages
6. Setting the Toast Message Position
7. Custom Styling with HTML and CSS of Toast Messages
8. Passing CSS classes to components
9. Using transitions and animation
10. Promise based Toast Messages
11. Handling autoClose
12. Render  String, number and Component
13. Setting custom icons, using built-in icons and disable icons
14. Pause toast when window loses focus
15. Delay toast notification
16. Limit the number of toast displayed
17. Implementing a controlled progress bar
18. Updating a toast when an event happens
19. Custom close button or Remove the close button
20. Changing to different transitions
21. Defining custom enter and exit animation
22. Adding Undo action to toast messages
23. Drag to remove

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What are Toast Notifications?

Toast or Toastify notifications are pop-up messages that come up with some information generally on the side bar. This could be information like success, loading, error or caution.

There could also be a progress bar or not. there are a variety of Toast Notifications available. Refer to below images for an example:

What is react toastify?

React toastify is one of the most popular libraries out there for creating toast notification in react.

With react toastify you can easily create toast notifications and alerts in your react application

Installing React Toastify

To install the react toastify, first you need a react application. You can easily add to your react application or if you are learning you can create a new react application with create-react-app

Then, in your react application you can install react toastify by:

npm install --save react-toastify

with yarn

yarn add react-toastify

Creating a basic toast notification

Creating a basic toast notification is easy. In your App.Js file import react toastify and the react-toastify CSS like:

import { ToastContainer, toast } from 'react-toastify';
import 'react-toastify/dist/ReactToastify.css';

then in your App() function just create a notification

function App(){
	const notify = () => toast("This is a toast notification !");
	return (
	<div>
        <button onClick={notify}>Notify !</button>
        <ToastContainer />
      </div>
    )
}

Now, we have learned how to create basic toast notifications. Let us now learn about some of the properties of toast notifications, styling characteristics and the types of toast notifications available

Types of toast notifications

There are 5 predefined types of toast notifications available in the react toastify

these are:

1. Default
2. info
3. success
4. warning
5. error

This is how these 5 types look like and how you can implement each of the type below:

Just call the Toast Emitter with the type you want to implement

Default

const notify = () => toast("This is a toast notification !");

This is the default, so no need to call anything here. The complete function looks like this:

function Toastify(){
  const notify = () => toast.error("This is a toast notification !");
  return (
    <div>
    <button onClick={notify}>Notify !</button>
    <ToastContainer />
  </div>
  )

Info

 const notify = () => toast.info("This is a toast notification !");

The complete function looks like

function Toastify(){
  const notify = () => toast.info("This is a toast notification !");
  return (
    <div>
    <button onClick={notify}>Notify !</button>
    <ToastContainer />
  </div>
  )
}

Success

const notify = () => toast.success("This is a toast notification !");

the complete function looks

function Toastify(){
  const notify = () => toast.success("This is a toast notification !");
  return (
    <div>
    <button onClick={notify}>Notify !</button>
    <ToastContainer />
  </div>
  )
}

Warning

const notify = () => toast.warning("This is a toast notification !");

function Toastify(){
  const notify = () => toast.warning("This is a toast notification !");
  return (
    <div>
    <button onClick={notify}>Notify !</button>
    <ToastContainer />
  </div>
  )
}

Error

const notify = () => toast.error("This is a toast notification !");

function Toastify(){
  const notify = () => toast.error("This is a toast notification !");
  return (
    <div>
    <button onClick={notify}>Notify !</button>
    <ToastContainer />
  </div>
  )
}

Setting the Toast Notification position

You can set the Toast notification position from a variety of pre set positions available in the react toastify library

the available positions are:

1. top-left
2. top-right
3. top-center
4. bottom-left
5. bottom-right
6. bottom-center

Here is how the positional notification looks like in each of the position and the code to implement the position

To add the position setting you need to edit the ToastContainer and set the position property like

<ToastContainer
position="top-right" />

In our example you can set it like

function Toastify(){
  const notify = () => toast.error("This is a toast notification !");
  return (
    <div>
    <button onClick={notify}>Notify !</button>
	    <ToastContainer
    	position="top-right"
    	/>
  </div>
  )
}

you can set other settings like so:

<ToastContainer
position="top-left"
/>

<ToastContainer
position="top-right"
/>
    
<ToastContainer
position="top-center"
/>
    
<ToastContainer
position="bottom=left"
/>

<ToastContainer
position="bottom-right"
/>
    
<ToastContainer
position="bottom-center"
/>

The different positions look like this

top-left

top-right

top-center

bottom left

bottom-right

bottom-center

Custom Styling the notification with HTML and CSS

You can custom style the toast notification with HTML and CSS, here is how you can customize the notification

There are bunch of CSS variables that are exposed by the react toastify library. You can override them and do customization that most will work for most people.

Here are the variables that you can override:

:root {
  --toastify-color-light: #fff;
  --toastify-color-dark: #121212;
  --toastify-color-info: #3498db;
  --toastify-color-success: #07bc0c;
  --toastify-color-warning: #f1c40f;
  --toastify-color-error: #e74c3c;
  --toastify-color-transparent: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.7);

  --toastify-icon-color-info: var(--toastify-color-info);
  --toastify-icon-color-success: var(--toastify-color-success);
  --toastify-icon-color-warning: var(--toastify-color-warning);
  --toastify-icon-color-error: var(--toastify-color-error);

  --toastify-toast-width: 320px;
  --toastify-toast-background: #fff;
  --toastify-toast-min-height: 64px;
  --toastify-toast-max-height: 800px;
  --toastify-font-family: sans-serif;
  --toastify-z-index: 9999;

  --toastify-text-color-light: #757575;
  --toastify-text-color-dark: #fff;

  //Used only for colored theme
  --toastify-text-color-info: #fff;
  --toastify-text-color-success: #fff;
  --toastify-text-color-warning: #fff;
  --toastify-text-color-error: #fff;

  --toastify-spinner-color: #616161;
  --toastify-spinner-color-empty-area: #e0e0e0;

  // Used when no type is provided
  // toast("**hello**")
  --toastify-color-progress-light: linear-gradient(
    to right,
    #4cd964,
    #5ac8fa,
    #007aff,
    #34aadc,
    #5856d6,
    #ff2d55
  );
  // Used when no type is provided
  --toastify-color-progress-dark: #bb86fc;
  --toastify-color-progress-info: var(--toastify-color-info);
  --toastify-color-progress-success: var(--toastify-color-success);
  --toastify-color-progress-warning: var(--toastify-color-warning);
  --toastify-color-progress-error: var(--toastify-color-error);
}

If changing variables is not enough for you. You can override existing class. Here are the classes that you can easily override

/** Used to define container behavior: width, position: fixed etc... **/
.Toastify__toast-container {
}

/** Used to define the position of the ToastContainer **/
.Toastify__toast-container--top-left {
}
.Toastify__toast-container--top-center {
}
.Toastify__toast-container--top-right {
}
.Toastify__toast-container--bottom-left {
}
.Toastify__toast-container--bottom-center {
}
.Toastify__toast-container--bottom-right {
}

/** Classes for the displayed toast **/
.Toastify__toast {
}
.Toastify__toast--rtl {
}
.Toastify__toast-body {
}

/** Used to position the icon **/
.Toastify__toast-icon {
}

/** handle the notification color and the text color based on the theme **/
.Toastify__toast-theme--dark {
}
.Toastify__toast-theme--light {
}
.Toastify__toast-theme--colored.Toastify__toast--default {
}
.Toastify__toast-theme--colored.Toastify__toast--info {
}
.Toastify__toast-theme--colored.Toastify__toast--success {
}
.Toastify__toast-theme--colored.Toastify__toast--warning {
}
.Toastify__toast-theme--colored.Toastify__toast--error {
}

.Toastify__progress-bar {
}
.Toastify__progress-bar--rtl {
}
.Toastify__progress-bar-theme--light {
}
.Toastify__progress-bar-theme--dark {
}
.Toastify__progress-bar--info {
}
.Toastify__progress-bar--success {
}
.Toastify__progress-bar--warning {
}
.Toastify__progress-bar--error {
}
/** colored notifications share the same progress bar color **/
.Toastify__progress-bar-theme--colored.Toastify__progress-bar--info,
.Toastify__progress-bar-theme--colored.Toastify__progress-bar--success,
.Toastify__progress-bar-theme--colored.Toastify__progress-bar--warning,
.Toastify__progress-bar-theme--colored.Toastify__progress-bar--error {
}

/** Classes for the close button. Better use your own closeButton **/
.Toastify__close-button {
}
.Toastify__close-button--default {
}
.Toastify__close-button > svg {
}
.Toastify__close-button:hover,
.Toastify__close-button:focus {
}

you can also build your own style using the scss file. Just edit the scss directory and build your own stylesheet.

If you just want to change some colors and stuff like that you can easily do that by changing some variables

variables are defined in the __variables.scss file

Passing CSS classes to components

The ToastContainer will accept the following props for styling,

1. className
2. toastClassName
3. bodyClassName
4. progressClassName
5. style

toast("Custom style", {
  className: "black-background",
  bodyClassName: "grow-font-size",
  progressClassName: "fancy-progress-bar",
});

This is how you can customize the toast notification

Using transitions and animation

When it comes to animation there are millions of ways you can animate the toast notification.  

m and of course you can create your custom animations as well

The four available transitions are:

1. bounce
2. slide
3. zoom
4. flip

You can use one of the default transitions like

to add a default transition import the transitions from react-toastify and then in the ToastContainer add the transition like shown above.

You can also implement the transition per toast as well, so you can have different transition for different toasts

Instead of the ToastContainer add the transition setting in the toast function

import { Bounce, Slide, Zoom, ToastContainer, toast } from 'react-toastify';    
  const notify = () => toast.success("This is a toast notification !");

<ToastContainer
    transition={Zoom}
    />
  </div>

function Toastify(){
  const notify = () => toast.success("This is a toast notification !",{
    transition: Slide
  });

  return (
    <div>

    <button onClick={notify}>Notify !</button>

    <ToastContainer
    />
  </div>
  )
}

For custom transition, create the custom transition and import it in your App.js file then in the ToastContainer or the toast function use it as you use the default transition. like

import { Bounce, Slide, Zoom, ToastContainer, toast } from 'react-toastify';    
  const notify = () => toast.success("This is a toast notification !");

<ToastContainer
    transition={yourCustomTransition}
    />
  </div>

Promise based Toast Messages

The react toasitfy exposes a toast.promise function. You can add a promise or a function that returns a promise.

When that promise is resolved or fails the notification will be updated accordingly.

When the promise is pending a notification spinner is also displayed

function Toastify(){

  const resolveAfter2Seconds = new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, 2000))
  const notify = () => toast.promise(resolveAfter2Seconds, {
    pending: "waiting for the promise to resolve",
    success: "promise resolved successfully",
    error: "promise failed to resolve"
  });

  return (
    <div>

    <button onClick={notify}>Notify !</button>

    <ToastContainer
    />
  </div>
  )
}

This is how you can create a promise based toast message.

Displaying a simple message is useful in most of the cases. For added interactivity you can display a message according to the promise response.

You can show some message if the promise resolves successfully or show some other message if the promise fails to resolve and even show a message when the promise is pending.

Here is how you can implement this:

function Toastify(){

  const notify = new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(() => resolve("this is soo cool"), 2000));
toast.promise(
    notify,
    {
      pending: {
        render(){
          return "Promise Pending"
        },
        icon: false,
      },
      success: {
        render({data}){
          return `Great, ${data}`
        },
        // other options
        icon: "👍",
      },
      error: {
        render({data}){
          // When the promise reject, data will contains the error
          return <MyErrorComponent message={data.message} />
        }
      }
    }
)
  return (
    <div>

    <button onClick={notify}>Notify !</button>

    <ToastContainer
    />
  </div>
  )
}

Handling Auto Close

The autoClose property of the toast accepts a duration in miliseconds or false

import { ToastContainer, toast } from 'react-toastify';

//Close the toast after 2 seconds
    <ToastContainer
    autoClose={2000}
    />

You can also individually close each toast at different points in time

function Toastify(){

  
  const notify = () => toast("closeAfter10Seconds", {
  autoClose: 10000
  });

  const notify2 = () => toast("closeAfter2Seconds", {
    autoClose: 2000
    });

  return (
    <div>

    <button onClick={notify} >Notify !</button>
    <button onClick={notify2} >Notify2 !</button>

    <ToastContainer
    autoClose={2000}
    />
  </div>
  )
}

You can also prevent the toast notification from closing by default using the false statement instead of the seconds like

toast("hi",
	{
    autoClose: false
    });

Render  String, number and Component

You can render any react node including a String, number or even a component. This is how you can do it

import React from "react";
import { ToastContainer, toast } from 'react-toastify';

const Data = ({closeToast, toastProps})=>{
  <div>
  Hi how are you? 
  {toastProps.position}
  <button>Retry</button>
  <button onClick={closeToast}>close</button>

</div>
}

function Toastify(){

  
  const notify = () => toast(
    <Data />
  );

  return (
    <div>

    <button onClick={notify} >Notify !</button>

    <ToastContainer
    />
  </div>
  )
}

Setting custom icons, using built-in icons and disable

There are built in icons available with the toastify library that are useful for most cases, you can include customize icons for your application and lastly you can delete the icons from the toast notification itself as well.

The toast types all display their associated icons, so you can specify a toast type and display the corresponding icon

Custom Icon

to display a custom icon simply supply the toast type with an icon liike so

//you can use a string
toast.success("custom toast icons". {
              icon: "👍"
});

//or a component
toast.success("custom toast icons". {
              icon: CustomIcon
});
// or a function
toast.success("custom toast icons". {
              icon: ({theme,type}) => <img src="url"/>
});

Pause taost when window loses focus

The default behaviour of the toast is to pause whenever the window loses focus. But you can set it to not pause by setting the pauseOnFocusLoss property to false like

//All all toasts
<ToastContainer pauseOnFocusLoss={false} />

// for individual toasts
toast('cool', {
  pauseOnFocusLoss: false
})

Delay toast notification

To delay notification display you can use setTimeout or use hte delay prop that uses setTimeout under the hood

toast('cool')
toast('how are you?', {delay: 1000});

Limit the number of toast displayed

Notification can be handy, but there can be multiple number of notification displayed.

You can limit the number of notifications displayed using the limit prop

import React from 'react';
import { toast, ToastContainer } from 'react-toastify';

import 'react-toastify/dist/ReactToastify.css';

// Display a maximum of 3 notifications at the same time
function App(){
  const notify = () => {
    toast("lorem ipsum");
  }

  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={notify}>Click on me a lot!</button>
      <ToastContainer limit={3}>
    </div>
  )
}

When the number of toasts displayed hits the limit the remaining toasts are added to a queue and then displayed whenever a slot is available

You can clear the queue as well, to clear the queue so that no more toasts are displayed use the clearWaitingQueue() method

toast.clearWaitingQueue();

Implementing a controlled progress bar

If you are programming a file upload or something else where you need to indicate the progress of the program then a controlled progress bar that indicates that process might come useful

Lets see an example where we upload file to the server and the progress bar will load as the file is being uploaded

import React from 'react';
import axios from 'axios';
import { toast } from 'react-toastify';

function demoOfProgressBar(){
  // Keeping a reference of the toast id
  const toastId = React.useRef(null);

  function uploadFiles(){
    axios.request({
      method: "post", 
      url: "/cool", 
      data: informationToBeUploaded, 
      onUploadProgress: p => {
        const progress = p.loaded / p.total;

        // see if the toast is being displayed
        if (toastId.current === null) {
          toastId.current = toast('Uploading', { progress });
        } else {
          toast.update(toastId.current, { progress });
        }
      }
    }).then(data => {
      //When the upload is done the progress bar will close and the transition will end
      toast.done(toastId.current);
    })
  }

  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={uploadFiles}>Upload files to server</button>
    </div>
  )
}

Updating a toast when an event happens

You can update a toast when an event happens, For example if you are uploading a file to the server, you can update the toast when the upload  is completed

Things you can update

1. Change the Type of toast or change colors or theme
2. Change the content of the toast
3. Apply a transition when the change happens

Lets see these with examples in action

1. Change the Type of toast or change colors or theme

import React from 'react';
import { toast } from 'react-toastify';

function changeToast() {
  const toastId = React.useRef(null);

  const notify = () => toastId.current = toast("this is soo cool", { autoClose: false });

  const updateToast = () => toast.update(toastId.current, { type: toast.TYPE.INFO, autoClose: 2000 });

  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={notify}>Notify</button>
      <button onClick={updateToast}>Update</button>
    </div>
  );
}

2. Change the content of the toast

Changing the content of the toast is easy as well. Just pass any valid element or even a react component.

In the below examples I will show how to render a string as well as component to change the toast in action

 // With a string
 toast.update(toastId, {
    render: "New content",
    type: toast.TYPE.INFO,
    autoClose: 5000
  });

// Or with a component
toast.update(toastId, {
    render: MyComponent
    type: toast.TYPE.INFO,
    autoClose: 5000
});

toast.update(toastId, {
    render: () => <div>New content</div>
    type: toast.TYPE.INFO,
    autoClose: 5000
});

3. Apply a transition when the change happens

If you want to apply a transition when a change happens thenyou can use the className or the transition property to achieve this

toast.update(toastId, {
  render: "stuff",
  type: toast.TYPE.INFO,
  transition: Zoom
})

Custom close button or Remove the close button

You can pass the a custom close button to the toast container and override the default button

Here is how you can do this.

  import React from 'react';
  import { toast, ToastContainer } from 'react-toastify';

  const CloseButton = ({ closeToast }) => (
    <i
      className="fastly-buttons"
      onClick={closeToast}
    >
    delete
    </i>
  );

function App() {
  const notify = () => {
    toast("this is a toast notification");
  };

  return (
    <div>
      <button onClick={notify}>Notify</button>;
      <ToastContainer closeButton={CloseButton} />
    </div>
  );
}

Here is how you can define it per toast

toast("this is a toast notification", {
  closeButton: CloseButton
})

You can also remove it globally and show it per toast or show it globally and hide it per toast like:

toast("this is a toast notification", {
  closeButton: true
})

//hide it per toast and show globally
toast("this is a toast notification", {
  closeButton: false
})

Changing to different transitions

React toastify comes with a bunch of predefined transitions that can be applied to toast notifications

These transitions determines how the toast notifications enter and exit the screen

here are the inbuilt transitions that react toastify offers

• Bounce: There is a bounce effect when toast enter and exit the screen
• Slide: Toasts slide into the screen and slide out of the screen
• Zoom: The toasts zoom into the screen and zoom out of the screen
• Flip: Toasts flip into the screen and flip out of the screen

import { toast, Slide, Zoom, Flip, Bounce } from 'react-toastify';

// Using the Zoom transition
toast('We are using zoom transition in this toast!', {
    transition: Zoom
});

// Using the Slide transition
toast.info('We are using slide transition in this toast!', {
    transition: Slide
});

Defining custom enter and exit animation

If you need even more customization for the enter and exit animation, you can define the custom transition using CSS transitions and animations

you can create a CSS transition and then apply it your toast notifications

Here is the step by step guide

1. Define the CSS Animation that you want  to implement

you need to define the @Keyframes in your CSS and your styled components like so

@keyframes customEnter {
  from {
    transform: translate3d(100%, 0, 0);
    visibility: visible;
  }
  to {
    transform: translate3d(0, 0, 0);
  }
}

@keyframes customExit {
  from {
    transform: translate3d(0, 0, 0);
  }
  to {
    transform: translate3d(100%, 0, 0);
    visibility: hidden;
  }
}

2. Next you need to create a Custom transition component. You can use the cssTransition helper from React toastify

import { cssTransition } from 'react-toastify';

const CustomTransition = cssTransition({
  enter: 'customEnter',
  exit: 'customExit',
  duration: [500, 800], // Duration for enter and exit transitions in milliseconds
  appendPosition: false  // Whether to append the position class names (`top-left`, `bottom-right`, etc.)
});

3. Apply the custom transition:

Use the custom transition in your toast notification

toast('This is a custom transition that I have created!', {
    transition: CustomTransition
});

Adding Undo action to toast messages

You can add a undo button to the toast messages. For example if some one did a action that they want to undo they can easily undo the action by clicking on the undo button

Drag to remove

you can drag the toast to remove it. You need to define the width percentage to remove the toast. You can also disable drag to remove.

set the percentage of drag when the toast is removed

pass the draggablepercent props with the percentage of screen that needs to be dragged to remove the toast as follows

<toastContainer draggablePercent={50} />

toast('Cool',{
    draggablePercent: 90
})

To disable the ability to drag to dismiss pass the false to draggable property

<ToastContainer draggable={false} />

You can disable per toast notification as follows

toast('Cool',{
    draggable: false
})

Here is how you can enable drag to remove in react Toastify notification.

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