SVG use tag and ReactJS

Question

MDN says that xlink:href is deprecated in favor of href. You should be able to use the href attribute directly. The example below includes both versions.

As of React 0.14, xlink:href is available via React as the property xlinkHref. It is mentioned as one of the "notable enhancements" in the release notes for 0.14.

<!-- REACT JSX: -->
<svg>
  <use xlinkHref='/svg/svg-sprite#my-icon' />
</svg>

<!-- RENDERS AS: -->
<svg>
  <use xlink:href="/svg/svg-sprite#my-icon"></use>
</svg>

Update 2018-06-09: Added info about href vs xlink:href attributes and updated example to include both. Thanks @devuxer

Update 3: At time of writing, React master SVG properties can be found here.

Update 2: It appears that all svg attributes should now be available via react (see merged svg attribute PR).

Update 1: You may want to keep an eye on the svg related issue on GitHub for additional SVG support landing. There are developments in the works.

Demo:

const svgReactElement = (
  <svg
    viewBox="0 0 1340 667"
    width="100"
    height="100"
  >
    <image width="667" height="667" href="https://i.imgur.com/w7GCRPb.png"/>
    { /* Deprecated xlink:href usage */ }
    <image width="667" height="667" x="673" xlinkHref="https://i.imgur.com/w7GCRPb.png"/>
  </svg>
);

var resultHtml = ReactDOMServer.renderToStaticMarkup(svgReactElement);
document.getElementById('render-result-html').innerHTML = escapeHtml(resultHtml);

ReactDOM.render(svgReactElement, document.getElementById('render-result') );

function escapeHtml(unsafe) { return unsafe.replace(/&/g, "&amp;").replace(/</g, "&lt;").replace(/>/g, "&gt;").replace(/"/g, "&quot;").replace(/'/g, "&#039;"); }

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/16.4.1/umd/react.development.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react-dom/16.4.1/umd/react-dom.development.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react-dom/16.4.1/umd/react-dom-server.browser.development.js"></script>

<h2>Render result of rendering:</h2>
<pre>&lt;svg
  viewBox=&quot;0 0 1340 667&quot;
  width=&quot;100&quot;
  height=&quot;100&quot;
&gt;
  &lt;image width=&quot;667&quot; height=&quot;667&quot; href=&quot;https://i.imgur.com/w7GCRPb.png&quot;/&gt;
  { /* Deprecated xlink:href usage */ }
  &lt;image width=&quot;667&quot; height=&quot;667&quot; x=&quot;673&quot; xlinkHref=&quot;https://i.imgur.com/w7GCRPb.png&quot;/&gt;
&lt;/svg&gt;</pre>

<h2><code>ReactDOMServer.renderToStaticMarkup()</code> output:</h2>
<pre id="render-result-html"></pre>
<h2><code>ReactDOM.render()</code> output:</h2>
<div id="render-result"></div>

Update september 2018: this solution is deprecated, read Jon’s answer instead.

--

React doesn’t support all SVG tags as you say, there is a list of supported tags here. They are working on wider support, f.ex in this ticket.

A common workaround is to inject HTML instead for non-supported tags, f.ex:

render: function() {
    var useTag = '<use xlink:href="/svg/svg-sprite#my-icon" />';
    return <svg dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{__html: useTag }} />;
}

If you encounter xlink:href, then you can get the equivalent in ReactJS by removing the colon and camelcasing the added text: xlinkHref.

You'll probably eventually be using other namespace-tags in SVG, like xml:space, etc.. The same rule applies to them (i.e., xml:space becomes xmlSpace).

As already said in Jon Surrell's answer, use-tags are supported now. If you are not using JSX, you can implement it like this:

React.DOM.svg( { className: 'my-svg' },
    React.createElement( 'use', { xlinkHref: '/svg/svg-sprite#my-icon' }, '' )
)

I created a little helper that works around this issue: https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-svg-use

first npm i react-svg-use -S then simply

import Icon from 'react-svg-use'

React.createClass({
  render() {
    return (
      <Icon id='car' color='#D71421' />
    )
  }
})

and this will then generate the following markup

<svg>
  <use xlink:href="#car" style="fill:#D71421;"></use>
</svg>