font awesome react share faShare

How to Use Font Awesome's React Component to Add a Share Icon

Font Awesome is a popular icon toolkit that offers a wide range of icons for web developers to use in their projects. One of the most common use cases for Font Awesome is adding social media icons to a website. In this guide, we'll show you how to use the Font Awesome React component to add a share icon to your website.

Step 1: Install Font Awesome and React

First, you'll need to install the Font Awesome and React libraries. You can do this using npm:

npm install --save font-awesome react-fontawesome

Note that the --save flag saves the libraries as dependencies in your package.json file.

Step 2: Import the Font Awesome Library and Share Icon

Next, you'll need to import the Font Awesome library and the share icon that you want to use. In this example, we'll be using the faShare icon.

// Import Font Awesome library
import { library } from '@fortawesome/fontawesome-svg-core';

// Import share icon
import { faShare } from '@fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons';

Step 3: Register the Share Icon with Font Awesome

After importing the share icon, you'll need to register it with Font Awesome. This allows you to use the icon in your project.

// Register share icon with Font Awesome library
library.add(faShare);

Step 4: Add the Share Icon to Your Component

Now that you've imported and registered the share icon, you can add it to your component using the Font Awesome React component.

// Import Font Awesome React component
import { FontAwesomeIcon } from '@fortawesome/react-fontawesome';

// Add share icon to component
function MyComponent() {
  return (
    <div>
      <FontAwesomeIcon icon="share" />
    </div>
  );
}

In this example, we're rendering the share icon within a div element using the FontAwesomeIcon component. The icon prop is set to "share", which corresponds to the faShare icon that we registered with the Font Awesome library.

Step 5: Style the Share Icon

Finally, you can style the share icon using CSS. You can use the className prop to add a class to the FontAwesomeIcon component and then style that class using CSS.

.share-icon {
  color: #007bff;
  font-size: 2rem;
}

// Add class to FontAwesomeIcon component
function MyComponent() {
  return (
    <div>
      <FontAwesomeIcon icon="share" className="share-icon" />
    </div>
  );
}

In this example, we've added a class called "share-icon" to the FontAwesomeIcon component and then styled that class using CSS.

Alternative Method: Using Font Awesome's CDN

If you don't want to install Font Awesome and React as dependencies in your project, you can also use Font Awesome's CDN to add the share icon to your website. Here's how:

<!-- Add Font Awesome CDN to HTML document -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://use.fontawesome.com/releases/v5.15.3/css/all.css"
  integrity="sha384-Bc3wVRPAw+YgA1C1Ff5XzXtPnJgPbMHNm5mGInH0M2mL0JGKj5V5rXnw5f5ZeAfo"
  crossorigin="anonymous">

<!-- Add share icon to HTML document -->
<i class="fas fa-share"></i>

In this example, we're adding Font Awesome's CDN to our HTML document and then using the <i> element with a class of "fas fa-share" to add the share icon to our website. Note that the fas class corresponds to the solid style of the Font Awesome icons.

Conclusion

Adding a share icon to your website is a great way to encourage users to share your content on social media. With Font Awesome's React component, it's easy to add and style the share icon in your project.