Csster

Concisely generate CSS style rules within Javascript. Features:

standard "object literal"/JSON format with good editor support
nesting to DRY up stylesheets
color functions like darken and saturate
built-in macros for common CSS idioms like clearfix, rounded corners, drop shadows.
extension points for custom behavior or cross-browser support.
and all the plain old Javascript behavior: functions, data structures, looping, Math operations, etc.

Usage

All code is packaged into a single Javascript file download, csster.js. There are no external dependencies. The project itself is hosted on GitHub.

require('csster.js'); // however you manage dependencies

Csster.style({
  h1: {
    fontSize: 18,
    color: 'red'
  }
});

...

Result, inserted in DOM automatically at the bottom of the <head> element:

...
<style type="text/stylesheet">
h1 {
font-size: 18px;
color: red;
}
</style>
</head>
...

Format of CSS Rules

The style method accepts CSS rules passed either as arrays or hashes, arrays just being a way to order the hashes. For example:

{
    ul: {
      margin: 5,
      padding: 0,
    }
    'ul li:first': {
      paddingLeft: 20px
    }
}

Note that

property names are automatically converted to hyphenated format from camelcase, so in many cases you can omit the quotation marks. ('float' needs to quoted since it's a reserved word.)
all raw numbers are assumed to be "pixels" (or "px"), and rendered as such.
any sort of selectors are allowed... they are just passed through to the stylesheet.

Nesting

Csster supports nesting of rules to keep things more concise:

{
    ul: {
      margin: 5,
      li: {
        paddingLeft: 20,
        '&:hover': {
          color: 'red'
        }
      }
    }
}

The "li" property in this case might be a selector or might be a property name. A list of valid property names is used to identify properties right now, and otherwise it's considered a sub-selector.

Csster supports SASS's "&" operator, to indicate that the selector should be combined with the parent selector. Instead of the default "any descendent" space character being inserted, no space is inserted.

Combined rules (with commas) are expanded as expected, so nested rules with commas have their parents expanded.

Functions

Most manipulations will fall into Javascript's language support, as far as any math or looping. Use Javascript to write necessary functions.

function/color.js contains SASS-like color functions:

"#ab342c".darken(%) -- make color darker by given percent
"#ab342c".lighten(%) -- make color lighter by given percent
"#ab342c".saturate(%) -- make color more saturated by given percent. To desaturate, use negative values for the percent. Note that "#ab342c".saturate(-100) renders in grayscale.

There are also color conversion routines if you want to build your own manipulation.

"#ab342c".toRGB()
"#ab342c".toHSL()
Csster.hslToHexColor(h,s,l)

Opacity is currently not supported by the color model.

Macros using "has" key

There are a host of pre-made macros that may be useful:

roundedCorners(radius) -- add rounded corners on all sides
roundedCorners(side, radius) -- add rounded corners on specified side: 'top', 'left', 'bottom' or 'right'
roundedCorners(corner, radius) -- add rounded corners to a specified corner: 'tl', 'tr', 'bl' or 'br'
imageReplacement(width, height, img, imgXPosition=0, imgYPosition=0) -- phark image replacement with optional background image offset.
boxShadow([xoffset, yoffset], radius, color)
verticalCentering(height) and horizontalCentering(width) -- center using the top 50% / margin-top -width/2 technique. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/148251/css-centering-tricks
clearfix() -- standard clearfix

To "mix these in", use the "has" key:

{
    'div#featured_box': {
      backgroundColor: '#394c89',
      has: roundedCorner(5)
    }
}

Multiple macros can be included by making that a list, eg. has: [roundedCorners(5), dropShadow()].

It's all Javascript, so macros and more complex functions are easy to write. To mix in a set of values, create a function that returns a hash of values, for example:

    function roundedCorners(radius) {
        return {
            '-webkit-border-radius': radius,
            '-moz-border-radius': radius,
            'border-radius': radius
        }
    }

A macro's properties will be overwritten by properties within including selector (or later included macros), similar to how the cascade takes the last defined value.

jQuery Integration

If jQuery is loaded first, Csster provides a "csster" method:

   $('.sidebar').csster({ border: '5px solid green', padding: 10 });

As expected, this adds a rule to the document with the ".sidebar" selector. In general, this can be called identically to the css() function. This is useful is the DOM on the page is dynamic and when a rule is more efficient than applying a style repeatedly to all the DOM nodes.

There are a few limitations: Currently a "context" is not supported. And be careful, since not all jQuery selectors are valid CSS selectors-- nothing is done to convert or report unsupported selectors (just like regular CSS).

Extending Csster

Csster is built as an extensible system.

Adding Custom Property Names

Use Csster.addPropertyNames to add any non-standard property names you'd like to be considered valid. The build-in tool rejects non-standard property names, although by default popular "-moz" and "-webkit" properties are added.

Pre-process rules

Functions called before properties are processed stored in Csster.propertyPreprocessors. Callback is provided a hash of properties to values, which it modifies in any way it wants. This is used to interpret macros.

Post-processing

Functions called after rules are processed stored in Csster.rulesPostProcessors. Called with an array of processed rules. Can be used to eliminate duplicates, modify selectors, etc. Standard list simplifies overly complex selectors with multiple IDs.

A convenient built-in function is compressSelectors. Using this processor, rules with multiple '#'s are simplified. For example, '#a #b #c' becomes '#c'. Usually this is what you will want, so include it with Csster.rulePostProcessors.push(Csster.compressSelectors);.

This is used to write custom browser overrides. For example, this one makes opacity work for IE:

  Csster.rulesPostProcessors.push(function ieOpacity(rules) {
    // http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/28/css3-solutions-for-internet-explorer/
    if (Csster.browser.msie) {
      for (var i = 0; i < rules.length; i++) {
        var rule = rules[i];
        var value = rule.props['opacity']
        if (value) {
          value = Math.round(value * 100.0);
          rules[i].props['filter'] = 'progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=' + value + ')';
        }
      }
    }
  });

Inserting into the DOM

Function that outputs a set of rules into the DOM is Csster.insertStylesheet and can be replaced if desired.

Contributing

Fork on Github and send back a merge request.

TDD

The design was driven by the specs.

Todo

decompile existing stylesheets
Fix license

Motivation

This project comes from my frustration of trying to build standalone Javascript widgets. Web projects always involve the combination of HTML DOM, CSS and Javascript. It's often simpler to generate the necessary DOM within your Javascript, removing any coupling (and a simpler calling convention) to a specific web page. But most widgets have certain style rules. To avoid any coupling with the CSS at all, styles can be included inline, but these gets bulky and hard to read. The "rule" nature of CSS is nice. So widgets then have a Javascript and CSS component. Wouldn't it be nice, though, to remove that CSS component.

With the advent of SASS, the coupling is even more complicated, as now there's some other tool completely unrelated to your component, written in some other language. Wouldn't a unified approach be nice?

Similar projects

http://revnode.com/oss/css/

keikubo/csster