RECESS

Developed at Twitter to support our internal styleguide, RECESS is a simple, attractive code quality tool for CSS built on top of LESS.

Incorporate it into your development process as a linter, or integrate it directly into your build system as a compiler, RECESS will keep your source looking clean and super manageable.

GENERAL USE

$ recess [path] [options]

OPTIONS

--compile - compiles your code and outputs it to the terminal. Fixes white space and sort order. Can compile css or less.
--compress - compress your compiled code.
--config - accepts a path, which specifies a json config object
--format - control the output format of errors:
- --format text - the default format, shows errors and context
- --format compact - show errors one-error-per-line, useful for IDE integration
--noSummary - don't output the summary block for each file
--includePath - accepts an additional directory path to look for @import:ed LESS files in.
--stripColors - removes color from output (useful when logging)
--watch - watch filesystem for changes, useful when compiling Less projects
--noIDs - doesn't complain about using IDs in your stylesheets
--noJSPrefix - doesn't complain about styling .js- prefixed classnames
--noOverqualifying - doesn't complain about overqualified selectors (ie: div#foo.bar)
--noUnderscores - doesn't complain about using underscores in your class names
--noUniversalSelectors - doesn't complain about using the universal * selector
--prefixWhitespace - adds whitespace prefix to line up vender prefixed properties
--strictPropertyOrder - doesn't looking into your property ordering
--zeroUnits - doesn't complain if you add units to values of 0

EXAMPLES

Lint all css files

$ recess *.css

Lint file, ignore styling of IDs

$ recess ./bootstrap.css --noIds false

Lint file with compact output and no color

$ recess ./bootstrap.css --format compact --stripColors

Compile and compress .less file, then output it to a new file

$ recess ./bootstrap.less --compress > ./bootstrap-production.css

Watch a directory for changes and auto compile a css file from the changes. experimental

$ recess input.less:ouput.css --watch watch/this/dir/for/changes

Watch a single file for changes and auto compile a css file from the changes. experimental

$ recess input.less:ouput.css --watch

Telling recess to ignore lint on a block of code.

.abc {
  position: absolute;
  top: 0;
  text-align: center;
}

/* recess ignore:start */
.def {
  color: #fafafa;
  display: inline-block;
  position: fixed;

  #gh { text-transform: uppercase; }
}

@import "library.less";

/* recess ignore:end */

.ijk {
  position: relative;
  bottom: 0;
  text-align: right;
}

All code in between ignore:start and ignore:end won't be passed to Recess linter. Usefull when you import Less files from framework such as Twitter Bootstrap.

PROGRAMMATIC API

Recess provides a pretty simple programmatic api.

var recess = require('recess')

Once you've required recess, just pass it a path (or array of paths) and an optional options object and an optional callback:

recess(['../fat.css', '../twitter.css'], { compile: true }, callback)

The following options (and defaults) are available in the programatic api:

compile: false
compress: false
includePath: []
noIDs: true
noJSPrefix: true
noOverqualifying: true
noUnderscores: true
noUniversalSelectors: true
prefixWhitespace: true
strictPropertyOrder: true
stripColors: false
zeroUnits: true

The callback is fired when each instance has finished processessing an input. The callback is passed an array of of instances (one for each path). The instances have a bunch of useful things on them like the raw data and an array of output strings.

When compiling, access the compiled source through the output property:

var recess = require('recess')

recess('./js/fat.css', { compile: true }, function (err, obj) {
  if (err) throw err
  console.log(
  	obj // recess instance for fat.css
  , obj.output // array of loggable content
  , obj.errors // array of failed lint rules
  )
})

INSTALLATION

To install recess you need both node and npm installed.

$ npm install recess -g

AUTHORS

Jacob Thornton: https://twitter.com/fat

LICENSE

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

nielk/recess