glamor-tachyons
v1.0.0-alpha.1
Published
A tool for using Tacyhons with glamor or other css-in-js libraries
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glamor-tachyons
A tool for using Tachyons with Glamor or other CSS-in-JS libraries
Background
const styles = {
header: 'mv4 f3',
main: 'ba br1 pa2'
}
export default () => {
<div>
<header className={styles.header}></header>
<div className={styles.main}></div>
</div>
}We started using this "page object" pattern to not repeat identical Tachyons className strings. The pattern helps with readability, especially when navigating another team's projects.
It's less cognitive load than our previous approach (webpack + sass + extract text plugin) and doesn't require an extra build step. Plus, it makes overriding styling for a shared component much easier to add.
But in several ways this pattern is less than ideal:
- Lacks strong enforcement. There's no guarantee that every tachyons class will make it into your
stylesobject. - Relies on an external systems. We load Tachyons through a Sass build pipeline in Webpack, so shared modules tend to depend on Tachyons implicitly to avoid duplicating it in downstream builds. Sad!
- Reusable components require extra work. If you want to reuse a component but alter some it's Tachyons classes, you need to expose extra props and provide a good way of merging them. No matter how you do it, there's more work to add a consistent, well-documented api.
- Anything goes when Tachyons can't support what you're trying to do. Inline styles, individual Sass files, and other imported sass/css modules are all across our projects to add custom styles.
On top of that, there are a few recent trends in CSS / browser performance that are hard to do in our current setup.
- Removing unused styles from the payload
- Inlining styles in the
<head>to avoid blocking the render while CSS downloads - CSS-in-JS techniques are gaining traction and libraries are becoming battle-hardened
Not to mention that our page object pattern is already CSS-in-JS! The natural conclusion was to survey the CSS-in-JS landscape and attempt to augment our in-house solution with some updated tooling under the hood.
Installation
Install with npm:
npm install --save glamor-tachyonsFor usage with glamor, be sure to install that too.
npm install --save glamorUsage
In it's simplest form, glamor-tachyons changes Tachyons classes into JavaScript objects:
import { tachyons } from 'glamor-tachyons'
tachyons('mt2 pink')
// => { fontSize: '5rem', color: '#ff80cc' }glamor-tachyons can also convert entire objects containing Tachyons class strings with the wrap method:
import { tachyons, wrap } from 'glamor-tachyons'
wrap({
h1: 'f-headline red',
h2: 'fw6 underline'
})
// => {
// h1: { fontSize: '5rem', color: '#ff80cc' },
// h2: { fontWeight: 600, textDecoration: 'underline' }
// }Although glamor is in the name, it's not required by glamor-tachyons. They're meant to go together, but there's nothing specific to glamor apart from producing output that it (and other CSS-in-JS libraries) can use.
To use with Glamor, simply pass the output of tachyons() to one of Glamor's APIs. It's easy, give it a shot!
import { tachyons } from 'glamor-tachyons'
import { css } from 'glamor'
export default () =>
<h1 className={css(tachyons('f-headline red'))}>For convenience, the wrap method accepts a second argument that makes converting a page-object of Tachyons classes to Glamor one step! It's the same result as calling css(tachyons(classNames)) for every value in the object.
import { wrap } from 'glamor-tachyons'
import { css } from 'glamor'
wrap({
h1: 'f-headline red',
h2: 'fw6 underline'
})
// => {
// h1: css({ fontSize: '5rem', color: '#ff80cc' }),
// h2: css({ fontWeight: 600, textDecoration: 'underline' })
// }Tachyons also has global styles that it needs in order to do it's thing. We didn't forget about those. The reset() method will pass each line of the Tachyons reset and global styles to a callback that works with glamor.insertRule, similarly to Glamor's own reset.
import { reset } from 'glamor-tachyons'
import { insertRule } from 'glamor'
reset({ insertRule })Together, glamor and glamor-tachyons let a component seamlessly and declaratively manage CSS composed by Tachyons classes. The following example, when server rendered, will include an inline <style> tag comprising the styles for only the Tachyons classes referenced in the component and the global reset.
import { wrap, reset } from 'glamor-tachyons'
import { css, insertRule } from 'glamor'
reset({ insertRule })
const styles = wrap({
header: 'mv4 f3',
main: 'ba br1 pa2'
}, css)
export default () => {
<div>
<header className={styles.header}></header>
<div className={styles.main}></div>
</div>
}API
tachyons(className): object
Convert Tachyons class names to an object of CSS properties. className can be a space-delimited string or array.
tachyons('mt2 pink')
// => { fontSize: '5rem', color: '#ff80cc' }wrap(styles, [callback]): object
Reduce an object containing Tachyons class names to a nested object containing CSS properties. Allows multiple levels of nesting.
wrap({
header: {
h1: 'pink'
},
body: 'black'
})
// => {
// header: {
// h1: { color: '#ff80cc' }
// },
// body: { color: '#000' }
// }Accepts an optional callback as a second argument, to be called for every key in the object. Offers an easy integration for glamor.css
wrap({
h1: 'pink'
}, glamor.css)
// => {
// h1: glamor.css({ color: '#ff80cc' })
// }reset(glamor): void
Applies the Tachyons reset and global styles by calling glamor.insertRule() for each line of the reset. An object with a method named insertRule will work.
import { insertRule } from 'glamor'
reset({ insertRule })
// Side effect: global reset is now appliedNotes / Open Questions
- Where does the Tachyons source go?
- Tachyons is added to your JavaScript bundle in the form of a modular data structure
- Difficult to get around this
- maybe use a webpack plugin at build time to change the class strings directly into js and strip the dependency?
- maybe use a webpack loader to pre-process and inline an object of Tachyons classes by file name?
- or that webpack plugin that lets your inline output that exec'ed at build time could work.
- [ ] Support Tachyons custom builds
Research / Prior work:
https://github.com/quora/parsecss
https://github.com/hugozap/reverse-tachyons
https://github.com/raphamorim/native-css
https://github.com/Khan/aphrodite