Atomic Design for Developers: Better Component Composition and Organization

A practical guide to developing component based sites and apps around the Atomic Design methodology.

Organizing your application (or app/site, I'll use these interchangeably) can seem easy. A folder for components, one for assets, another for utility methods. Maybe even a separate folder for pages! Don't be fooled, it is almost never that easy...

"It's alright. This place just needs a one-hour bureaucratizing."

— Hermes Conrad

Hermes Conrad would agree that what your app needs is a good, one-hour bureaucratizing. Hooray for rules and regulations! I'm not normally for bureaucracy but as your app starts to grow you should have a way to organize things that provides more granular organization, separation and, importantly, is based on explicit rules and guidelines rather than guesswork or instinct.

My Goal

I'll provide a little background, but there is a lot of content out there about Atomic Design generally, both from designers and developers. My main goal is three-fold:

Enumerate the rules I've found that work for me and my team when determining how to categorize a component.
Provide code showing implementation for each of the five categories.
Show usage of these components in the context of a "real" site.

Please note: You are free to disagree with any/all of the rules I present. You may find that they do not cover every edge case. I'd love to hear any thoughts and opinions. My hope is that you come away with an idea of how to implement this methodology in a way that works for you.

Backstory
Atomic Design
Why this Article
Why NOT this Article
Sample Code
Atoms
- Examples of Atoms
- Rules of Atoms
Molecules
Organisms
- Examples of Organisms
- Rules of Organisms
Templates
Pages
Conclusion
- One Rule to Rule Them All

Backstory

A few years back I was searching for a better way to organize components in web apps. The designers I was working with at the time were adopting a design system that followed Atomic Design principles and it seems like that would translate well into the front-end development space since ultimately our work was to implement the components created by the design team.

Having a common language to use for categorizing components seemed like a no-brainer, although for a variety of reasons unrelated to Atomic Design this didn't end up being the case between our designers and engineers.

It did work out pretty well for the engineering team internally though so, good news, you don't need to have buy-in and adoption from designers to start using these principles for development!

Atomic Design

Atomic Design is a methodology for creating design systems created by Brad Frost. You can read his full post for a comprehensive overview.

For the purposes of this article it's important to know that Atomic Design breaks design systems (and the components that make up an application) into a hierarchy with five levels.

It begins at the smallest component level (atoms) and combining those to create larger components (molecules) which themselves get combined into still larger components (organisms) which are then displayed in logical groups (templates) that make up the app (pages).

Atoms -> Molecules -> Organisms -> Templates -> Pages

In this article I'm going to talk about applying Atomic Design principles to front-end development. I'll be using React for specific examples, but the definitions and principles should apply to any component or composition based UI applications.

Why this Article

The biggest challenge I faced with my team after deciding to use Atomic Design principles as the basis for our component organization and hierarchy was figuring out what components went into which buckets. There were some other writeups I found that had bits and pieces of details, but I never found anything that gave both a prescriptive example of how each level might be delineated and examples of implementation and usage.

When you're building reusable components there are a lot of considerations, including decisions like how a component is structured, what data it needs, where that data lives, if (and where) state is needed, and so on. Since you've (hopefully) already made most, or all, of those decisions before starting the build the component, you can use them as a set of heuristics to store your component where it makes the most sense.

heuristic - a practical method [for decision making] that is not guaranteed to be optimal, perfect, or rational, but is nevertheless sufficient for reaching an immediate, short-term goal.

— wikipedia

I say heuristics intentionally, since you're certain to find edge cases or gray areas in any methodology. The goal is to make sure those are few and far between, so you're left with a system of organization providing maximum reusability, flexibility, and composability.

Atomic design is not a linear process, but rather a mental model to help us think of our user interfaces as both a cohesive whole and a collection of parts at the same time.

— Brad Frost

Why NOT this Article

In my experience this approach is best suited to applications that are (or expect to be) large, frequently updated, and/or frequently extended.

It helps to have a well-planned design and information hierarchy, but it's not strictly necessary. Even with relatively simple mockups or wireframes you can start to develop a sense of what parts of the UI build upon one another.

I would not use this approach if I were working on libraries or applications that were relatively limited in scope, complexity, or life expectancy.

Sample Code

Throughout this article I'll be sharing and referring to code that I've developed in the form of a relatively simple list/todo app. There's no interactive functionality. It's designed to show visually & structurally how components build on one another other using Atomic Design. On the site, you can take a look at the /settings page to toggle outlines for various levels of components.

Website: https://atomic-design-example.benjaminwfox.com/
Repository: https://github.com/BenjaminWFox/example-app-atomic-design

Atoms

The atom is the most basic component, as generic as can be.

Examples of Atoms

Icons, buttons, links, and labels are good examples of atoms. They don't do much on their own, and many other components on a site will typically depend on using these in one way or another. They can be used virtually anywhere throughout a site, so they have a lot of flexibility. Let's look at a very basic example, the Button:

export default function Button({label, onClick}) {
  return <button role="button" onClick={onClick}>{label}</button>
}

This is about as basic as it gets. Not even any styles needed here. While that may not be the case for most sites, styles would not add much complexity and wouldn't change anything about the "Atomness" of the Button. Another example, a BlockLink:

import Link from 'next/link'

export default function BlockLink({href, children}) {
  return <div className="underline"><Link href={href}>{children}</Link></div>
}

For whatever reason, the demo site I built has a frequent need for block-display links! In this case importing a framework primitive is fine. It's smaller than an Atom. You can call it a neurotron if you want, that's a cool-sounding made-up word 😎 ⚛️. The Link is just an abstraction of the a tag with framework-specific functionality. It doesn't do anything from a style or markup perspective.

Visual example of Atoms: BlockLink, Button, and Icon components.

Rules of Atoms

Should not compose other components/only uses native elements or framework-specific components similar to native elements
Can have its own markup & styles
Can maintain its own internal state
Should not be tightly coupled to specific UI or Logic areas
Should not access application (or higher level) state directly
Should not have any non-ui/layout related side effects
Should not implement any application-specific business logic

Molecules

The molecule composes atoms to create a more complex component, with its own markup and styling added to the mix. Aside from that, the rules I use for molecules are virtually identical to those of atoms.

Examples of Molecules

Molecules, being made up of Atoms, tend to be a little more specific in usage, but (and this is of course also design dependant) they should also still be reusable in areas throughout the site. Below is an example atom ImageWithOverlay that overlays some text onto an image. It doesn't have much in the way of specific styling besides positioning the text.

Below that is a molecule BannerImage that composes ImageWithOverlay to create a banner designed specifically to be added at the start of content, flush with the top & side margins of its parent element.

// /atoms/image-with-overlay.js
import styles from './image-with-overlay.module.css'
import Image from 'next/image'

export default function ImageWithOverlay({ title, subtitle, src, layout = 'fill' }) {
  return (
    <>
      <div className={styles.caption}>
        {title ? <h1>{title}</h1> : null}
        {subtitle ? <p>{subtitle}</p> : null}
      </div>
      <Image
        src={src}
        layout={layout}
        objectFit="cover"
        objectPosition="center center"
      />
    </>
  )
}

// /molecules/banner-image.js
import Image from 'next/image'
import styles from './banner-image.module.css'
import ImageWithOverlay from '../atoms/image-with-overlay'

export default function BannerImage({ src, title, subtitle, height }) {
  return (
    <div
      style={{height}}
      className={[styles.banner, 'flush-width', 'flush-top'].join(' ')}>
      <ImageWithOverlay title={title} subtitle={subtitle} src={src}/>
    </div>
  )
}

Compare the BannerImage here (stretched to the top & side margins) against the ImageWithOverlay in the previous screenshot:

A Nebulous Molecule

There are a few components in the example project that, on first glance, don't fit neatly into the molecule definition. The SidebarLinkList, HeaderLinkList, and HeaderIconList fall into this category. They are all about the same, and render a collection of children in a single div:

import styles from './header-link-list.module.css'

export default function HeaderLinkList({children}) {
  return <div className={styles.headerLinkList}>{children}</div>
}

The reason I've labeled these as molecules is that while they don't explicitly compose any atoms, they all depend implicitly on a specific atom being passed as children. In the case here of the HeaderLinkList, all the children should be BlockLink components. If the example app were more robust, I might create a custom PropType entry to throw an error if any of the children were not BlockLink.

Rules of Molecules

A component made up of one or more Atoms
Can have its own markup & styles
Can maintain its own internal state
Should not be tightly coupled to specific UI or Logic areas
Should not access application (or higher level) state directly
Should not have any non-ui/layout related side effects
Should not implement any application-specific business logic

Organisms

Organisms are where the business logic of your application starts to come out. They might correspond to a specific feature or section of the app. They may also be generally applicable but tightly coupled with the application logic. Data fetching and reading/writing to application state should primarily happen here (or alternatively at the Page level).

Examples of Organisms

One of the more basic organisms in the sample app is the SidebarNavigation. At two molecules and one atom, it has not grown terribly complex, but it is specialized enough - designed to live in the sidebar and further composes a molecule - that it is no longer a molecule itself.

Constructing organisms might be a good time to re-evaluate your other components. Do they really belong where you've categorized them? If they are categorized in the correct place, have you named them appropriately?

Literally as I am writing this, I noticed that in the SidebarNavigation component I had named IconHeading as SidebarTitle, and VerticalListLayout as SidebarLinkList 😱

That's sub-optimal!

Why? There isn't anything explicitly sidebar-related about those two components!

It just happened that the sidebar was the only place they had been implemented. While I feel I was correct in making them molecules (even that may be debatable for the VerticalListLayout, but meh...heuristics), if they were actually only usable within the context of the sidebar adding them as organisms may have been more appropriate.

After re-naming those two components to ensure they're more generalized, my SidebarNavigation component looks like:

import SidebarLinkList from '../molecules/sidebar-link-list'
import BlockLink from '../atoms/block-link'
import SidebarTitle from '../molecules/sidebar-title'

export default function SidebarNavigation({ title, subtitle, sidenav, selected, children }) {
  return (<>
    <IconHeading title={title} subtitle={subtitle} />
    <VerticalListLayout>
      {sidenav.map(entry => {
        const label = selected === entry.name ? `> ${entry.name}` : entry.name

        return <BlockLink key={entry.href} href={entry.href}>{label}</BlockLink>
      })}
    </VerticalListLayout>
    {children}
  </>)
}

The SidebarNavigation component is used in other more specific components like the ListSidebar. In this example it doesn't do a whole lot, but it would eventually require business logic for handling things like the button.

import SidebarNavigation from '../../components/organisms/sidebar-navigation'
import Button from '../atoms/button'

export default function ListSidebar({category, name, description, sidenav}) {
  const handleClick = () => {
    alert('Add List Functionality not implemented!')
  }

  return (
    <SidebarNavigation selected={category} title={name} subtitle={description} sidenav={sidenav}>
      <Button onClick={handleClick} label="Add List" />
    </SidebarNavigation>
  )
}

Rules of Organisms

A complex component made up of multiple atoms and/or molecules and/or other organisms
Can have its own markup & styles
Can fetch application-specific data
Can implement application-specific business logic
Can be connected to application (or higher level) state
Can be tightly coupled with a specific area (UI and/or Logic) of the app
Can be organized into sub-folders by logical categorization (feature, page, etc...)

Templates

Templates are a way to ensure that the Pages of your app are consistent. They handle creating the layout, and make it easy to know where specific areas of content or functionality need to go. There are a number of ways to create templates. The way I'm going to show is very explicit, and I like it because it helps force high-level separation of application logic (into pages and organisms) and application layout (in templates).

Examples of Templates

In React this is not a pattern I've seen very often, although I have seen at least a couple articles where it was discussed. That may be because people more often talk about lower-level (atom/molecule/organism) or higher-level (page) components 🤷‍♂️

import styles from '../../styles/Home.module.css'

export default function TemplateSidebarContent({ header, sidebar, content }) {
  return (
    <>
      <header className={styles.header}>
        {header}
      </header>
      <section className={styles.content}>
        <aside className={styles.sidebar}>
          {sidebar}
        </aside>
        <main className={styles.main}>
          {content}
        </main>
      </section>
    </>
  )
}

The component really doesn't do much right?! The css import does most of the heavy lifting, but even then it's not much - primarily setting flex properties, widths, and heights. It's not until this component is composed into Pages that the good times start rolling 🥳 as each of those props (header/sidebar/content) will be an individual component that we can count on to be placed on screen exactly as intended. 🤓

A template, highlighting the Header, Sidebar, and Content

Template Variations

It can be tempting to start adding additional props to templates to support 'variations' like a border, a background color, or other minor stylistic differences. Is this something I've done? 👀 Yes. Is this something you should do? No. Is it the end of the world if you do? Also no.

Just consider that the more thought that has to go into using the template component, the less useful it becomes. The beauty is in its simplicity and not having to worry about high-level details of how the site is laid out on the page.

Tiered Templates

It's worth noting that templates don't have to be implemented only at the page level. Suppose you're using a template to lay out the highest-level elements of the site (header, sidebar, content area) as you'll see in the next section, you may find that you also want templates to lay out content within the content area!

Templates are an excellent choice anywhere a consistent layout is reused with different content.

Rules of Templates

A component that facilitates the layout of multiple organisms
Can have its own markup & styles.
Can accept & pass props as required.
Should not access application (or higher level) state
Should not have any non-ui/layout related side effects
Should not implement any application-specific business logic

Pages

Pages are the final piece of the puzzle, and each one will implement a specific Template. Pages are distinctly separate from Routing, and while I'm not covering Routing in this article it should at least be said that in the same way each Page implements a Template, each Route should implement a Page.

Because I'm using React with Next.js, which has page-based routing, I've made a specific delineation in my project structure. All Atomic Design Pages live under /src/components/pages, and all Routes live under /src/pages. Excluding the special _app.js, there is a 1:1 ratio of component pages to route pages.

Examples of Pages

import TemplateSidebarContent from '../templates/template-sidebar-content'
import UserHeader from '../../components/organisms/user-header'
import CategoryDetails from '../../components/organisms/category-details'
import CategorySidebar from '../../components/organisms/category-sidebar'

export default function Category({name, description, category, categories, sidenav}) {
  return <TemplateSidebarContent
    header={<UserHeader />}
    sidebar={<CategorySidebar category={category} name={name} description={description} sidenav={sidenav} />}
    content={<CategoryDetails category={category} />}
  />
}

For each page I'll pick both the template and the components to fill the template. These could be fairly general-use like the UserHeader, which is used on all pages. They can also be specific use like the CategoryDetails organism. As mentioned in the Templates section, CategoryDetails could implement another template if needed! Heck, either of the other components could implement another template as well if the content were complex enough!

Rules of Pages

A component that implements a particular template
Can fetch application-specific data
Can implement application-specific business logic
Can be connected to application (or higher level) state
Should not have its own markup & styles

A Note on Routes

You may find, depending on your particular framework, that Routes do more of the heavy lifting than pages. In Next.js this will probably be the case, since it is in the Routes where you have to work with the special getStaticProps and getServerSideProps.

That's not a problem, but I would pick just one, Pages or Routes, to put this logic. Whichever of those you don't pick should be a more basic implementation.

In the sample app, I've put the data fetching and other logic into the Route to simplify the Page implementation.

Conclusion

Hopefully this has given you some concrete examples of developing with Atomic Design and a new way to think about structuring your applications.

I want to reiterate the quote from Brad Frost that this is primarily "a mental model to help us think of our user interfaces as both a cohesive whole and a collection of parts at the same time." As you continue developing component based applications, always consider how you structure those components to be as generic, flexible, and reusable as possible.

One Rule to Rule Them All

To that end I have one more rule that probably deserves its own post, but has caused me enough headache over the years that it bears mentioning here. If you forget everything else, remember this!

Assign margins to a component via its parent, never to the component itself.

Why not? Consider that each component you create should be a self contained unit that functions predictably within its own bounds. Margins break this pattern by creating space outside of the element itself, and can lead to unpredictability or variable behavior due to margin collapsing.

Consider the above div with margin, padding, and a border. The border of the element is essentially where the component should end. If the margin is applied to the div component itself, reusing the component in other contexts may have unintended layout and display consequences.

If the div needs a margin, the better approach is to specifically target it in the parent component.

Margins create extra space around an element. In contrast, padding creates extra space within an element.

— MDN Web Docs, emphasis added

An example from the sample app is the VerticalListLayout component. It renders a collection of children that are intended to be BlockLinks.

export default function VerticalListLayout({children}) {
  return <div className={[styles.verticalListLayout, 'molecule'].join(' ')}>{children}</div>
}

It is also intended that every BlockLink has a certain layout within the parent component, including specific margins. If I had created this component in a vacuum, I might have applied the margin to each BlockLink, since that's how it needs to appear in the list, but that would cause problems reusing the BlockLink in other contexts. To prevent this the margin is assigned from the VerticalListLayout itself, applied to any first-level children.

.verticalListLayout > * {
  margin: 0 var(--spacing-md) var(--spacing-lg);
}

Questions? Comments?

Hope you found this informative, maybe even helpful! Let me know on Twitter: @BenjaminWFox.

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