cssed

🤷‍♂️ CSS-in-JS modules (via babel plugin):

• lets you write CSS in JS,
• plays nicely with Vite/NextJS/Webpack,
• ⚡️ blazingly fast zero-runtime by accident
• and zero-configuration by choice

Rationale

Why create another CSS-in-JS library? Well, I tried hard to avoid doing it, but couldn't find one which does what I want. And I don't want much:

1. Template literals syntax.
2. Write pure CSS/SASS/stylus but in JS.
3. Media queries and pseudoclasses support.
4. Seamless intergration with framework (NextJSVite in my case).

More on struggle finding existing solution here

Installation

npm i cssed

Configuration

With Vite

vite.config.js:

import cssedVitePlugin from 'cssed/vite-plugin'

export default {
  plugins: [
    // ...
    cssedVitePlugin()
    // ...
  ]
}

With webpack/next/babel

No configuration required as long as you have enabled module:cssed in your .babelrc:

{
  "plugins": ["module:cssed"]
}

Also, add compilation artifcats to gitignore:

# cssed compilation artifacts
.cssed

Usage

import { css } from 'cssed'
import { dark, light } from './constants'

const styles = css`
  .red {
    color: red;
    background: ${dark};
  }

  .blue {
    color: blue;
    background: ${light};
  }
`

const Box = (props) => (
  <div className={props.isRed ? styles.red : styles.blue}></div>
)

That's it? That's it.

How it works

Babel plugin during compilation will extract content of css function call into a separate .module.css file and will place it in .cssed folder in the root of the project, rebasing URLs in css.

Before:

// index.js – before compilation
import { css } from 'cssed'
const styles = css`
  .red {
    color: red;
  }
`

const Box = (props) => <div className={styles.red}></div>

After compilation with cssed:

// index.js – compiled with cssed
import _a from '../.cssed/[hash].module.css'
const styles = _a

const Box = (props) => <div className={styles.red}></div>

And file [hash].module.css contains extracted css:

/* [hash].module.css */
/* AUTO GENERATED FILE. DO NOT EDIT  */
.red {
  color: red;
}

From here Webpack will handle it as a regular file, which has imported CSS and will process it accordingly to configured pipeline.

Syntax Highlight

Same as for styled-jsx package.

Visual Studio Code Extension

Launch VS Code Quick Open (⌘+P), paste the following command, and press enter.

ext install vscode-styled-jsx

Autocomplete Visual Studio Code Extension

Launch VS Code Quick Open (⌘+P), paste the following command, and press enter.

ext install vscode-styled-jsx-languageserver

Exmaples

check examples for:

• vite-react
• vite-solid

Prior art

This would not be possible, without linaria. In fact inability to make it work in NextJS pushed me over the line to create cssed 🙃. They did awesome job making evaluators for template literals. So you can write expressions like these:

import { light } from './theme'

const cls = css`
  .some {
    color: ${light};
    font-size: ${22 + 20};
  }
`

Other notable projects:

• stylis.js. Pretty much every CSS-in-JS project uses it for compilation. It is ultra fast and realiable, was considering using it, until idea with extracting css into file and letting bundler do all the hard lifting came to mind.
• css-zero was a good project to learn from. Craig added atomic layer to it, which is overkill for me. Also, syntax was not what I wanted:

// this will not generate `cls.red` and `cls.blue` you would expect
const cls = css`
  .red {
    color: red;
  }
  .blue {
    color: blue;
  }
`

• styled-jsx as with everything guys at Vercel do, it's tailored to awesome devx. Unfortunately, wasn't fit for my needs. This particular issue was super annoying (codesandbox):

const Header = () => {
  // This will not be styled. It's frustrating as hell.
  const moreItems = (
    <>
      <div className={'item'}></div>
      <div className={'item'}></div>
    </>
  )

  return (
    <>
      <div className={'item'}></div>
      {moreItems}
      <style jsx>
        {`
          .item {
            color: red;
          }
        `}
      </style>
    </>
  )
}

• astroturf. Another awesome project to learn from. They went different direction and rely heavily on PostCSS. css api while what I need, didn't work in NextJS and also breaks when trying to use exported value like:

import { dark } from '../theme'

// this will throw
const styles = css`
  .red {
    border: 2px solid ${dark};
    padding: 10px;
  }
`

• csjs and csstag. Two close to what I needed, gave up trying to make them work with NextJS. Also, additional setup required to make it zero-runtime. 👍to both for getting CSS syntax in JS.

Gimmicks:

CSSed is dead-simple CSS-in-JS implementation, without any gimmicks. Here is one if you need it:*

License

MIT