How to Set a External Svg Color in HTML Using CSS

How to set a External SVG color in HTML using CSS?

The problem is that you don't target the actual SVG element, you target the "SVG container". To be able to change the color of one of the elements inside the SVG you have to target that specific element.

E.g change the fill color of all paths in a SVG:

.weather_icon path {
    fill: yellow;
}

If you want to make it easier to handle add class names to the different elements inside the svg.

<path class="my-class" ......... />

This will make it possible to target a specific element by its class:

.weather_icon .my-class {
    fill:blue;
    stroke:green;
}

How can I change the color of an 'svg' element?

You can't change the color of an image that way. If you load SVG as an image, you can't change how it is displayed using CSS or JavaScript in the browser.

If you want to change your SVG image, you have to load it using <object>, <iframe> or using <svg> inline.

If you want to use the techniques in the page, you need the Modernizr library, where you can check for SVG support and conditionally display or not a fallback image. You can then inline your SVG and apply the styles you need.

See:

#time-3-icon {
   fill: green;
}

.my-svg-alternate {
  display: none;
}
.no-svg .my-svg-alternate {
  display: block;
  width: 100px;
  height: 100px;
  background-image: url(image.png);
}

<svg width="96px" height="96px" viewBox="0 0 512 512" enable-background="new 0 0 512 512" xml:space="preserve">
<path id="time-3-icon" d="M256,50C142.229,50,50,142.229,50,256c0,113.77,92.229,206,206,206c113.77,0,206-92.23,206-206
    C462,142.229,369.77,50,256,50z M256,417c-88.977,0-161-72.008-161-161c0-88.979,72.008-161,161-161c88.977,0,161,72.007,161,161
    C417,344.977,344.992,417,256,417z M382.816,265.785c1.711,0.297,2.961,1.781,2.961,3.518v0.093c0,1.72-1.223,3.188-2.914,3.505
    c-37.093,6.938-124.97,21.35-134.613,21.35c-13.808,0-25-11.192-25-25c0-9.832,14.79-104.675,21.618-143.081
    c0.274-1.542,1.615-2.669,3.181-2.669h0.008c1.709,0,3.164,1.243,3.431,2.932l18.933,119.904L382.816,265.785z"/>
</svg>

<image class="my-svg-alternate" width="96" height="96" src="ppngfallback.png" />

How do you style a external svg with css

If you include your svg image by referencing an external file, like you do with the object tag, the elements in the svg image are not included to your main documents DOM tree. They comprise their own tree. Therefore, the elements in the external image can't be matched by CSS selectors in the main document.

You can style the object element like you could most other elements, for example giving it a border. But you can't (this way, at least) access the elements in the external image. In your case, you try to style #ob's color. That would apply to the objects text color, not to any color inside the referenced svg image. On browsers not supporting svg, the "Your browser does not support SVG" notice would probably rendered in blue.

The case with your CSS selector for svg is similar: CSS selectors in the main document match only to elements in the main document, and there's no svg to be found, just an object.

There are some ways to apply CSS styling to svg elements. The idea generally is to bring the CSS and the svg elements to the same DOM tree, either by getting the svg elements from the external file to the main document or the CSS from the main document to the external file:

1. Embed your svg element and its child elements directly into the main document instead of referencing an external file. In this case, the svg element and its children will be part of the man document's DOM tree, so they're accessible to the main document's CSS.
2. Embed an svg element into your main document and use xlink's use to reference an external svg image (rather, a part of it). For the general idea, see this answer or this answer.
3. Load the elements from the external image to the main documents tree via AJAX/XHR. For the general idea, again see this answer.
4. You can grab a hold of the external images' tree with JavaScript and edit their styles from there. The keyword for that would be contentDocument, see this answer.
5. If you can't get the elements from your external svg image to your main document's DOM tree, so the main documents CSS selectors can match to it, you can try the other way around: Add your CSS to your svg file. Similar to the ways you can include CSS into a html document, you can use inline style attributes, use a style element like in html's head or reference an external CSS file with <?xml-stylesheet ... ?>. For more information, see for example this tutorial.

How to style SVG with external CSS?

Your main.css file would only have an effect on the content of the SVG if the SVG file is included inline in the HTML:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/SVG_In_HTML_Introduction

<html>
  <body>
  <svg version="1.1" id="Layer_1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" viewBox="0 0 56.69 56.69">
    <g>
      <path d="M28.44......."/>
    </g>
  </svg>
</html>

If you want to keep your SVG in files, the CSS needs to be defined inside of the SVG file.

You can do it with a style tag:

http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/styling.html#StyleElementExample

<!DOCTYPE svg PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD SVG 1.1//EN" 
  "http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/1.1/DTD/svg11.dtd">
<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"
     width="50px" height="50px" viewBox="0 0 50 50">
  <defs>
    <style type="text/css"><![CDATA[
      .socIcon g {
        fill:red;
      }
    ]]></style>
  </defs>
  <g>
    <path d="M28.44......./>
  </g>
</svg>

You could use a tool on the server side to update the style tag depending on the active style. In ruby you could achieve this with Nokogiri. SVG is just XML. So there are probably many XML libraries available that can probably achieve this.

If you're not able to do that, you will have to just have to use them as though they were PNGs; creating a set for each style, and saving their styles inline.

How to change color of SVG image using CSS (jQuery SVG image replacement)?

Firstly, use an IMG tag in your HTML to embed an SVG graphic. I used Adobe Illustrator to make the graphic.

<img id="facebook-logo" class="svg social-link" src="/images/logo-facebook.svg"/>

This is just like how you'd embed a normal image. Note that you need to set the IMG to have a class of svg. The 'social-link' class is just for examples sake. The ID is not required, but is useful.

Then use this jQuery code (in a separate file or inline in the HEAD).

    /**
     * Replace all SVG images with inline SVG
     */
        jQuery('img.svg').each(function(){
            var $img = jQuery(this);
            var imgID = $img.attr('id');
            var imgClass = $img.attr('class');
            var imgURL = $img.attr('src');

            jQuery.get(imgURL, function(data) {
                // Get the SVG tag, ignore the rest
                var $svg = jQuery(data).find('svg');

                // Add replaced image's ID to the new SVG
                if(typeof imgID !== 'undefined') {
                    $svg = $svg.attr('id', imgID);
                }
                // Add replaced image's classes to the new SVG
                if(typeof imgClass !== 'undefined') {
                    $svg = $svg.attr('class', imgClass+' replaced-svg');
                }

                // Remove any invalid XML tags as per http://validator.w3.org
                $svg = $svg.removeAttr('xmlns:a');

                // Replace image with new SVG
                $img.replaceWith($svg);

            }, 'xml');

        });

What the above code does is look for all IMG's with the class 'svg' and replace it with the inline SVG from the linked file. The massive advantage is that it allows you to use CSS to change the color of the SVG now, like so:

svg:hover path {
    fill: red;
}

The jQuery code I wrote also ports across the original images ID and classes. So this CSS works too:

#facebook-logo:hover path {
    fill: red;
}

Or:

.social-link:hover path {
    fill: red;
}

You can see an example of it working here:
http://labs.funkhausdesign.com/examples/img-svg/img-to-svg.html

We have a more complicated version that includes caching here:
https://github.com/funkhaus/style-guide/blob/master/template/js/site.js#L32-L90

How to use external SVG in HTML?

You should embed the image by using <object> tag:

<object data="algerie.svg" type="image/svg+xml"></object>

Refer to this question for the details: Do I use <img>, <object>, or <embed> for SVG files?

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