How to Assign CSS to a Pre Element in JavaScript

Learn how to properly generate and assign CSS styles to a pre element in JavaScript, making your code cleaner and more efficient.
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This video is based on the question stackoverflow.com/q/65482130/ asked by the user 'boris.kirov' ( stackoverflow.com/u/14458497/ ) and on the answer stackoverflow.com/a/65482220/ provided by the user 'imvain2' ( stackoverflow.com/u/3684265/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

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How to Assign CSS to a Pre Element in JavaScript

When building web applications, it's common to need to display generated content—like CSS or JavaScript code—within a <pre> element for stylistic or instructional purposes. A reader recently faced the challenge of assigning dynamically generated CSS to a <pre> element, which is visible on the webpage but found the process confusing. Today, we’ll walk through a straightforward approach to solve this problem step-by-step.

Understanding the Challenge

The reader’s original goal was to create a JavaScript function that would generate CSS rules based on user input and display these styles in a preformatted text block. However, the code didn't produce the expected output. The primary issues were related to how the generated styles were being displayed and ensuring that line breaks appeared correctly in the final output.

Steps to Solve the Problem

Here, we’ll break down the solution into clear steps, making it easier to follow and implement.

1. Clean Up the Template String

The first thing to note is that we need to ensure our template strings do not have extra spaces or unwanted characters that might give us incorrect results. Using new line characters appropriately allows the code to be displayed neatly.

2. Use Correct Variables for Output

Instead of using generate in the textContent assignment, we should be using the generated CSS strings—specifically columnStartStyles and columnEndStyles. These are the variables containing the CSS rules we want our <pre> element to display.

3. Implementation

Here's the corrected and organized code that implements these changes effectively, allowing the CSS output to be shown in the preformatted text block properly:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

HTML Structure

Ensure your HTML form allows users to input values correctly and set up a button to trigger the generate function:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Conclusion

By making slight adjustments to your JavaScript function and ensuring clean text output in your <pre> element, you can effectively display dynamically generated CSS or code snippets on your web page. Implementing these changes together allows for a much better user experience and cleaner code visualization. Give it a try, and watch your generated styles become beautifully displayed for your users! Happy coding!