grunt-sass-import

A Grunt module for importing Sass partials with (some very basic) notion of source order

What is this?

If you use Sass to generate your stylesheets, then you're probably using partials to keep your code modular by separating it into different files. You probably also have different files for global rules, mixins, variables and whatnots. If this is the case, you probably have a main file where you @import all the other files.

The annoying thing is that if you have a directory full of partials, you have to include them individually because Sass does not support globbing in the @import statements (i.e. you can't do @import mixins/*).

This Grunt plugin brings that functionality and allows you to import entire directories into your Sass structure. Since source order actually matters in Sass, it offers a very basic mechanism for managing import order.

Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.5

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:

npm install grunt-sass-import --save-dev

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-sass-import');

The "sass_import" task

Overview

In your project's Gruntfile, add a section named sass_import to the data object passed into grunt.initConfig().

grunt.initConfig({
  sass_import: {
    options: {},
    dist: {
      files: {
        'destination file': [source files]
      }
    },
  },
});

Options

options.basePath

• Type: String
• Default value: '' (empty string)

Defines the environment for the Sass files to live in. All the paths defined in files as well as the destination files will be relative to basePath. A common example would be setting basePath to 'sass/'.

options.includeExtension

• Type: Boolean
• Default value: false

Whether to include file extensions in the @import statements (e.g. @import file.scss rather than @import file)

Including files

One of the main issues with Sass partial loaders is the source order is important. For example, if you declare a variable in partial _a.scss and make use of it in _b.scss, you have to import _a.scss and then _b.scss, otherwise you'll see an error. This Grunt plugin offers a very basic support for manipulating source order.

Basic syntax

If you don't care about source order, you can simply pass an array of file paths to be included.

grunt.initConfig({
  sass_import: {
    options: {},
    dist: {
      files: {
        'main.scss': ['base/*', 'mixins/*', 'modules/*']
      }
    }
  },
});

In this case, all the files from base/* will be included in their natural order (alphabetically), as well as all the files from mixins/* and finally modules/*.

Advanced syntax

If you have a partial that depends on others within the same directory, you can chose to include it after all the other files.

grunt.initConfig({
  sass_import: {
    options: {},
    files: {
      'main.scss': [{path: 'global/*', after: 'global/_global.scss'}]
    },
  },
});

Conversely, you can choose to import a file first, before all the other files in a directory.

grunt.initConfig({
  sass_import: {
    options: {},
    files: {
      'main.scss': [{path: 'global/*', first: 'global/_headings.scss'}]
    },
  },
});

Typical use case

A typical use case is to have sass_import creating a main Sass file with all the imports which will then feed into a Sass task to generate the CSS code.

grunt.initConfig({
  sass_import: {
    options: {
      basePath: 'sass/'
    },
    files: {
      'main.scss': [{path: 'global/*', first: 'global/_headings.scss'}]
    },
  },
 
  sass: {
    dist: {
      options: {
        style: 'compressed'
      },
      files: {
        'web/css/main.css': 'main.scss'
      }
    }
  },
 
  watch: {
    stylesheets: {
      files: ['sass/**/*.scss'],
      tasks: ['sass_import', 'sass']
    }
  },
});

Contributing

Feel free to contribute with issues/code/love.

Release History

v0.1.0 - Still testing the whole thing.