sprity

A modular image sprite generator.

Generates sprites and proper style files out of a directory of images.

Supports retina sprites.

Can inline base64 encoded sprites.

Supports different output formats

Supports different image engines

Install

Install with npm

npm install sprity --save

If you want to use sprity on your cli install with:

npm install sprity -g

Usage

Programatic usage

var sprity = require('sprity');
sprity.create(options, cb);

CLI

See sprity-cli for how to use sprity on the command line.

With Gulp

You can use the sprity.src method with gulp. It creates a gulp compatible vinyl stream. It takes an options object as its only argument.

var gulp = require('gulp');
var gulpif = require('gulp-if');
var sprity = require('sprity');

// generate sprite.png and _sprite.scss
gulp.task('sprites', function () {
  return sprity.src({
    src: './src/images/**/*.{png,jpg}',
    style: './sprite.css',
    // ... other optional options
    // for example if you want to generate scss instead of css
    processor: 'sass', // make sure you have installed sprity-sass
  })
  .pipe(gulpif('*.png', gulp.dest('./dist/img/'), gulp.dest('./dist/css/')))
});

With Grunt

See grunt-sprity for how to use sprity with Grunt.

Options

• src: Array or string of globs to find source images to put into the sprite. Read more about globs here [required]
• out: path of directory to write sprite file to [Default: process.cwd()]
• base64: inlines base64 encoded sprites in the style file
• cssPath: path or url of sprites on the web server used to reference the sprite in the styles (relative or absolute path or full url) [Default: ../images]
• dimension: used dimensions for the sprite. A combination of ratio and dpi. Read more about dimensions: How to specify dimensions
• engine image processing engine. Read more about engines: Image processing engines [Default: lwip]
• format output format of the sprite (Depends on what engine is used) [Default: png when used with lwip]
• name name of sprite file without file extension [Default: sprite]
• processor style processing module. Read more about style processors: Style processors [css]
• template output template file, overrides processor option. Read more about templates: Templates
• style file to write css to, if omitted no css is written (relative to out path)
• background background color of the sprite in hex [Default: #FFFFFF]
• cachebuster appends a "cache buster" to the background image in the form "?<...>" (Boolean) [Default: false]
• margin margin in px between tiles [Default: 4]
• opacity background opacity (0 - 100) of the sprite. defaults to 0 when png or 100 when jpg [Default: 0]
• orientation orientation of the sprite image (vertical|horizontal|binary-tree) [Default: vertical]
• prefix prefix for the class name used in css (without .)
• no-sort disable sorting of layout. Read more about: Layout algorithms
• split create sprite images for every sub folder [Default: false] How to use split option
• style-indent-char Character used for indentation of styles (space|tab) [Default: space]
• style-indent-size Number of characters used for indentation of styles [Default: 2]

How to specify dimensions

Dimensions are used to specify different sizes of sprites. You can for example create a normal and a retina sprite by providing the following object to sprity's options:

'dimension': [{
  ratio: 1, dpi: 72
}, {
  ratio: 2, dpi: 192
}],

On command line this would work as follows:

sprity out/ images/*.png -s style.css -d 1:72 -d 2:192

You can provide as many dimensions as you want. Just keep in mind that the source images you provide need to be for the biggest dimension. For the above example the images would need to have 192dpi.

How to use split option

When you enable the split option sprity will look at sub directories of the src option and will generate a sprite per sub directory. For example if you have the following directory structure:

src
 |- icons
      |- editor
      |- file
      |- maps
      |- navigation
      |- notification

and the options:

var options = {
  out: './dist',
  src: './src/icons/**/*.png',
  split: true
}

sprity will generate the following sprites in ./dist:

• sprite-editor.png
• sprite-file.png
• sprite-maps.png
• sprite-navigation.png
• sprite-notification.png

With sprity-cli you would use the command:

sprity create "./dist" "src/sprites/**/*.png" --split

To change the name of the sprites to for example icons-editor.png use the name option:

var options = {
  out: './dist',
  src: './src/icons/**/*.png',
  split: true,
  name: 'icons'
}

Image processing engines

sprity can use different image processing engines. sprity uses the engine to create and manipulate the sprites. Image processing engines may have there specific requirements. So before installing one please have a look at the documentation of the engine.

Installation

Since image engines are just node.js modules you can install them with npm.

npm install <engine-name>

Usage

You can switch image engines with the engine option. If the image engine name starts with sprity- you can omit that. For example to use sprity-canvas:

sprity out/ images/*.png -s style.css --engine canvas
# or
sprity out/ images/*.png -s style.css --engine sprity-canvas

Available image processing engines

• sprity-lwip - the default engine. is automatically installed, when installing sprity
• sprity-canvas - uses node-canvas to create sprites. Has some non-nodejs requirements.
• sprity-gm - uses gm as its image processing library. Requires GraphicsMagick or ImageMagick.

Write your own

You can find more about how to write an image processing engine for sprity in the sprity wiki

Style processors

Style processors generate are used for the generation of the style files. By default sprity can create css files, but with the help of style processors it can generate a lot of different formats.

Installation

Style processors are simple node modules, you can install them with npm:

npm install <processor-name>

Usage

You can switch style processors with the processor option. If the processor name starts with sprity- you can omit that. For example to use sprity-sass:

sprity out/ images/*.png -s style.scss --processor sass
# or
sprity out/ images/*.png -s style.scss --processor sprity-sass

Available style processors

• sprity-css - the default style processor. is automatically installed, when installing sprity
• sprity-sass - generates scss or sass files
• sprity-less - generates less files
• sprity-css-rollover - generates css rollovers

Write your own

You can find more about how to write your own style processor in the sprity wiki

Templates

If you don't want to write a processor module or you only need a simple template for one of you're projects you can use the templating system of sprity.

sprity uses http://handlebarsjs.com/ to process your templates. To quickly start you can use the templates from sprity-css as a starting point.

Available variables

You can find more about the variables and functions available in the handlebars templates in the sprity wiki