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Learn tips on how to utilize the <g>, <defs>, and <use> elements to group, reference, and reuse parts of your SVG.
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Along with elements for drawing graphics
like circles, paths and polygons.
0:00
SVG also provides useful elements for
organizing and structuring your SVG files.
0:04
In this video, you'll learn tips
on how to leverage the g, defs and
0:10
use elements to group reference and
reuse parts of your SVG.
0:15
Using these elements correctly will keep
the code in your SVG easier to read and
0:20
maintain.
0:24
First, the g or group element acts as
a grouping container in your SVG file.
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It groups together sets of related
elements like the div tag does in HTML.
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For example, the SVG in this file draws a
circular badge with a star in the center.
0:37
Notice how the path and
0:43
circles that make up just the star
are wrapped inside of a g tag.
0:44
Grouping elements together this way
becomes helpful when you want to
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animate two or
more SVG elements as one group.
0:53
For instance, the group in this SVG has
a class of star, any CSS transformation or
0:56
animation applied to this g
element affects the entire group.
1:02
In the browser, notice the rotation and
1:08
scaling applied to just
the center star group.
1:10
You can also think of an SVG group as
a layer in a graphics editor like sketch,
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Figma or Adobe Illustrator.
1:19
When you want to logically group shapes
together, you'll often put them on
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the same layer or select and group them
using illustrators grouping feature.
1:25
Many vector tools will even export
grouped objects to SVG using g tags.
1:30
In the project files for this video,
there's an SVG file named heart.svg,
1:36
which contains an svg that draws
a simple heart with two paths.
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Let's copy this svg and
paste it inside of index.HTML.
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Currently, the svg paths
have no fill color, so
1:57
they display a black
fill color by default.
2:00
What's great about the g element is
that when you apply a style to it,
2:04
that style is inherited by all
the child elements in the group.
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For example, I'll wrap the path with
a set of opening and closing g tags and
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give it a class heart.
2:16
In the project CSS I can target heart and
apply a red fill color
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Both paths take on the red fill color.
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But what if you want to display more of
these heart icons with different colors
2:49
and sizes?
2:52
Instead of copying and pasting this
svg and changing the styles for each.
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You can turn this heart graphic into
a template you can reuse anywhere on
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the page.
3:03
One way you can do that is with defs.
3:08
The defs element stores content and
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defines elements that
you want to reuse later.
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Elements inside a defs tag do not get
rendered to the browser until you
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reference them in your document.
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For instance,
let's wrap our heart group in defs tags.
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Notice that the heart graphic no
longer displays in the browser.
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To display the graphic we need to
reference it with the use element.
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Our defs tag acts as a recipe or
set of instructions for making an svg.
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The use element cooks or creates
an element based on our instructions.
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You can duplicate and
reuse a single element or
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group of elements inside g tags or
defs tags.
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The way you reference the element you want
to display is with the href attribute.
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First, I'll give the g tag an id of heart.
4:20
Then I'll reference
that id in the use tag.
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I'll do this using the href attribute.
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We see the heart graphic in the browser.
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Notice how the fill color defined in the
CSS is passed into the contents of the use
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element.
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But now we can also set the fill
in line with the use element.
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We'll first remove the heart
selector from the CSS.
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And I'll give the use
element a fill of red inline.
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And in the browser, nothing has changed.
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The use element accepts other svg
attributes like xy coordinates,
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height, width and
even transform attributes.
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For instance,
I can scale down the heart size.
5:34
Now it's a little smaller.
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To reuse the heart graphic, I'll duplicate
it by adding another use element.
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Copy this here.
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Make the fill color green.
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Change the scale to 0.3 and
add a translate of 160.
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And there you have it,
a reusable template for icons.
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Up next,
I'll teach you another way to group and
6:25
define reusable elements with symbols.
6:28
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