Published on June 2, 2023

React MUI Content Security Policy

CryptonixSoftwares

@cryptonixsoftwares

Introduction

Material-UI is a user interface library that provides predefined and customizable React components for faster and easy web development, these Material-UI components are based on top of Material Design by Google. In this article let’s discuss the Hidden component in the Material-UI library.

When using Material-UI (also known as MUI) with React, it's important to set up a Content Security Policy (CSP) to ensure that your app is secure against cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. A set of rules that specify which content can be loaded by web page is known as CSP. It helps to prevent XSS attacks on the web page.

const csp = `
  default-src 'self';
  script-src 'self';
  style-src 'self';
`;

Basic Setup

Create a folder called example. Open your command prompt and navigate to the example folder. Now type in the following command

npx create-react-app

Create a folder called component inside the src folder. Inside that component, create a file called Main.js.

cd src
mkdir component
touch Main.js

Again, in the same folder, open the command prompt and type in the following command to install React MUI library.

npm install @mui/material @emotion/react @emotion/styled

Install the React 'helmet' library.

npm install helmet
npm install react-helmet
npm install react-helmet-async

Importing the 'helmet' library.

import { Helmet } from 'react-helmet';

Project Structure

Once the installation is complete, you will have the modules required. Your folder structure should look something like this

Example 1

Setting up a CSP with React MUI using the 'helmet' library. It is used as the document head manager for React-based applications.

App.js

import React from 'react';
import Main from './component/Main';
import { Helmet } from 'react-helmet';
 
const csp = `
  default-src 'self';
  script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline';
  style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline';
  img-src 'self' data:;
  font-src 'self' data:;
`;
 
console.log({ csp });
 
const App = () => {
  return (
    <>
      <Helmet>
        <meta http-equiv='Content-Security-Policy' content={csp} />
      </Helmet>
 
      <Main />
    </>
  );
};
 
export default App;

Main.js

import React from 'react';
 
function Main() {
  return (
    <>
      <div>
        GeeksforGeeks
        <br />
        Content Security Policy in MUI
      </div>
    </>
  );
}
 
export default Main;

Step to run the application

Open your command prompt in the same folder, and type in the following command

npm start

Example 2

Setting up CSP using the 'react-helmet-async' library.

App.js

import React from 'react';
import Main from './component/Main';
import { HelmetProvider } from 'react-helmet-async';
import { CssBaseline } from '@material-ui/core';
 
function App() {
  return (
    <>
      <HelmetProvider>
        <CssBaseline />
        <Main />
      </HelmetProvider>
    </>
  );
}
 
export default App;

Main.js

import React from 'react';
import { Helmet } from 'react-helmet-async';
import { Button } from '@material-ui/core';
 
function Main() {
  return (
    <>
      <Helmet>
        <meta
          http-equiv='Content-Security-Policy'
          content="
            default-src 'self';
            script-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline' 'unsafe-eval';
            style-src 'self' 'unsafe-inline';
            font-src 'self' data:;
            img-src 'self' data:;
          "
        />
      </Helmet>
      <Button variant='contained' color='primary'>
        Hello, World!
      </Button>
    </>
  );
}
 
export default Main;

This sets the 'Content-Security-Policy' header to allow resources to be loaded only from the same origin ('self'), and also allows inline scripts and styles.

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