Free-Style

Free-Style is designed to make CSS easier and more maintainable by using JavaScript.

Installation

npm install free-style --save

Why?

There's a great presentation by Christopher Chedeau you should check out.

Solved by using CSS in JS

No global variables (What and where is .button? Why is it conflicting?)
Defined dependency systems (CommonJS, Require.js, <script />)
Dead code elimination automatically removes unused styles
Minification through JavaScript tooling
Shared constants and reusable styles
Every style is isolated, tested and namespaced to the JS component
Extensible - everything from Math to color manipulation already exists!

Also solved with Free-Style

Works with third-party DOM components (You can nest regular .class-name in your styles)
Consistently generates styles and class names, and will automatically merge duplicate styles
Develop components alongside the style (No more hunting CSS files for estranged ul > li > a)
Create universal applications and serve styles for only the components rendered (see React Free-Style)
Use the CSS you already know ({ '&:hover': { ... } })
Automatically namespace @-rule styles ({ '@media (min-width: 500px)': { ... } })
Overload CSS properties using arrays ({ backgroundColor: ['red', 'linear-gradient(to right, red 0%, blue 100%)'] })
Small and powerful API that works with any ecosystem (~360 SLOC)

But How?

Free-Style generates a consistent hash from the style, after alphabetical property ordering and formatting, to use as the class name. This allows duplicate styles to automatically be merged on duplicate hashes. Every style is "registered" and assigned to a variable, which gets the most out of linters that will warn on unused variables and features like dead code minification. Using "register" returns the class name used for the Style instance and style instances (returned by create()) can be merged together at runtime to output only the styles on page (see React Free-Style). Styles should usually be created outside of the application run loop (e.g. render()) so the CSS string and hashes are only generated once.

Ways to Use

react-free-style - React implementation that renders styles on the current page (for universal apps)
typestyle - Popular type-safe interface for working with CSS
stylin - Simplest abstraction for creating styles, rules, and keyframes, and keeps <style /> in sync
i-css - Library for writing CSS with literal objects
This module! - Manually create, compose and manipulate style instances

Usage

var FreeStyle = require("free-style");

// Create a stylesheet instance.
var Style = FreeStyle.create();

// Register a new style, returning a class name to use.
var backgroundStyle = Style.registerStyle({
  backgroundColor: "red"
}); //=> "f14svl5e"

// Inject `<style>` into the `<head>`.
var styleElement = document.createElement("style");
styleElement.textContent = Style.getStyles();
document.head.appendChild(styleElement);

// Render the style by using the class name.
React.render(
  <div className={backgroundStyle}>Hello world!</div>,
  document.body
);

Style

var buttonStyle = Style.registerStyle({
  $displayName: "button",
  backgroundColor: "red",
  padding: 10
});

console.log(buttonStyle); //=> "button_f65pi0b"

Tip: The string returned by registerStyle is a unique hash of the content and used as the HTML class name. The $displayName is only used during development, and stripped in production (process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production').

Overload CSS Properties

Style.registerStyle({
  background: [
    "red",
    "-moz-linear-gradient(left, red 0%, blue 100%)",
    "-webkit-linear-gradient(left, red 0%, blue 100%)",
    "-o-linear-gradient(left, red 0%, blue 100%)",
    "-ms-linear-gradient(left, red 0%, blue 100%)",
    "linear-gradient(to right, red 0%, blue 100%)"
  ]
}); //=> "f1n85iiq"

Nest Rules

Style.registerStyle({
  color: "red",
  "@media (min-width: 500px)": {
    color: "blue"
  }
}); //=> "fk9tfor"

Nest Selectors

Style.registerStyle({
  color: "red",
  ".classname": {
    color: "blue"
  }
}); //=> "fc1zv17"

Parent Selector Reference

Style.registerStyle({
  color: "red",
  "&:hover": {
    color: "blue"
  }
}); //=> "f1h42yg6"

Tip: The ampersand (&) will be replaced by the parent selector at runtime. In this example, the result is .f1h42yg6:hover.

Use JavaScript

var extend = require("xtend");

var ellipsisStyle = {
  whiteSpace: "nowrap",
  overflow: "hidden",
  textOverflow: "ellipsis"
};

var redEllipsisStyle = Style.registerStyle(
  extend(
    {
      color: "red"
    },
    ellipsisStyle
  )
); //=> "fvxl8qs"

Tip: This is a shallow extend example. There are modules on NPM for deep extending objects. You can also take advantage of new JavaScript features, such as const and computed properties:

const mediaQuery = "@media (min-width: 400px)";

const style = Style.registerStyle({
  backgroundColor: "red",
  [mediaQuery]: {
    backgroundColor: "pink"
  }
});

Unique Style Output

Sometimes you need to skip the de-duping behavior of free-style. Use $unique to force separate styles:

Style.registerStyle({
  color: "blue",
  "&::-webkit-input-placeholder": {
    color: `rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)`,
    $unique: true
  },
  "&::-moz-placeholder": {
    color: `rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)`,
    $unique: true
  },
  "&::-ms-input-placeholder": {
    color: `rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)`,
    $unique: true
  }
}); //=> "f13byakl"

Style.getStyles(); //=> ".f13byakl{color:blue}.f13byakl::-webkit-input-placeholder{color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)}.f13byakl::-moz-placeholder{color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)}.f13byakl::-ms-input-placeholder{color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)}"

Keyframes

var colorAnimation = Style.registerKeyframes({
  from: { color: "red" },
  to: { color: "blue" }
}); //=> "h1j3ughx"

var style = Style.registerStyle({
  animationName: colorAnimation,
  animationDuration: "1s"
}); //=> "fibanyf"

Tip: The string returned by registerKeyframes the name of the animation, which is a hash of the rule.

Hash Rule

Hashed rules are what registerKeyframes uses internally. It accepts a prefix and the styles object, which will create a rule using prefix + hash. Conveniently, the same contents will generate the same hash so you can register vendor-specific rules using the same hash.

var keyframes = {
  from: {
    color: "blue"
  },
  to: {
    color: "red"
  }
};

var animation1 = Style.registerHashRule("@keyframes", keyframes); //=> "f1dz2mpx"
var animation2 = Style.registerHashRule("@-webkit-keyframes", keyframes); //=> "f1dz2mpx"

Rules

Style.registerRule("@font-face", {
  fontFamily: '"Bitstream Vera Serif Bold"',
  src: 'url("https://mdn.mozillademos.org/files/2468/VeraSeBd.ttf")'
});

Style.registerRule("@media print", {
  body: {
    color: "red"
  }
});

Style.registerRule("body", {
  margin: 0,
  padding: 0
});

CSS Object

Style.registerCss({
  body: {
    margin: 0,
    padding: 0,
    "@print": {
      color: "#000"
    }
  },
  h1: {
    fontSize: "2em"
  }
});

CSS String

Style.getStyles(); //=> ".f65pi0b{background-color:red;padding:10px}"

Useful Libraries

Implementor Details

Debug

Display names will automatically be removed when process.env.NODE_ENV === "production".

Changes

Free-Style provides two methods for detecting style changes. First is a changeId property, incremented every time a change occurs.

const Style = create();
const prevChangeId = Style.changeId;

Style.registerStyle({ color: "red" });

if (Style.changeId !== prevChangeId) {
}

The only argument to create() is a map of change function handlers. All functions are required:

add (style: Container<any>, index: number): void
change (style: Container<any>, oldIndex: number, newIndex: number): void
remove (style: Container<any>, index: number): void

All classes implement Container, so you can getStyles(), getIdentifier() or use id.

Classes

FreeStyle.FreeStyle; // Similar to writing a CSS file, holds styles and rules - returned from `create()`.
FreeStyle.Style; // Styles hold the CSS string and a generate a consistent hash of their contents.
FreeStyle.Rule; // Rules are lighter-weight containers that can be nested inside `FreeStyle` instances.
FreeStyle.Selector; // Selectors hold the CSS selector and can be nested inside `Style` instances.
FreeStyle.Cache; // `FreeStyle`, `Style` and `Rule` all extend the cache which maintains reference counts.

Other Properties and Methods

var ChildStyle = Style.create();

Style.merge(ChildStyle); // Merge the child styles into the current instance.
Style.unmerge(ChildStyle); // Unmerge the child styles from the current instance.

Legacy Browsers

To support legacy browsers (<= IE8) you'll need to polyfill some ES5 features, such as Object.keys, Object.create(null) and Array.isArray.

License

MIT

Gastonite/free-style