postcss-styled-syntax

PostCSS syntax for template literals CSS-in-JS (e. g. styled-components, Emotion). Built to be used as Stylelint custom syntax or with PostCSS plugins.

Syntax supports:

• Full spectrum of styled-components syntax
• Deeply nested interpolations
• Interpolations in selectors, property names and values
• JavaScript and TypeScript (including files with JSX)
• All functions:
  • styled.foo
  • styled(Component)
  • styled.foo.attrs({})
  • styled(Component).attrs({})
  • css
  • createGlobalStyle

let Component = styled.p`
	color: #bada55;
`;

Install

npm install --save-dev postcss-styled-syntax

Usage

Stylelint

Install syntax and add to a Stylelint config:

{
	"customSyntax": "postcss-styled-syntax"
}

Stylelint custom syntax documentation.

PostCSS

Install syntax and add to a PostCSS config:

module.exports = {
	syntax: 'postcss-styled-syntax',
	plugins: [ /* ... */ ],
};

Example assumes using PostCSS CLI or other PostCSS runner with config support.

How it works

Parsing

Syntax parser JavaScript/TypeScript code and find all supported components and functions (e. g. css``). Then it go over them and builds a PostCSS AST, where all found components become Root nodes inside Document node.

All interpolations within found component CSS are end up in the AST. E. g. for a declaration color: ${brand} Decl node will look like:

Decl {
	prop: 'color',
	value: '${brand}',
}

When interpolation is not part of any node it goes to the next node's raws.before. For example for the following code:

let Component = styled.p`
	${textStyles}

	color: red;
`;

AST will look like:

Decl {
	prop: 'color',
	value: 'red',
	raws: {
		before: '\n\t${textStyles}\n\n\t',
		// ...
	}
}

If there is not next node after interpolation, it will go to parents raws.after. For example for the following code:

let Component = styled.p`
	color: red;

	${textStyles}
`;

AST will look like:

Root {
	nodes: [
		Decl {
			prop: 'color',
			value: 'red',
		},
	],
	raws: {
		after: '\n\n\t${textStyles}\n'
		// ...
	},
}

Stringifying

Mostly it works just as default PostCSS stringifyer. The main difference is css helper in interpolations within a styled component code. E. g. situatians like this:

let Component = styled.p`
	${(props) =>
		props.isPrimary
			? css`
					background: green;
			  `
			: css`
					border: 1px solid blue;
			  `}

	color: red;
`;

css helper inside an interpolation within Component code.

During parsing whole interpolation (${(props) ... }) is added as raws.before to color: red node. And it should not be modified. Each css helpers remember their original content (as a string).

When stringifyer reaches raws.before of a node it checks if it has interpolations with css helpers. If yes, then it searchs for css helper original content and replace it with stringified css helper. This way changes made to the AST of css helper will be stringified.

Known issues

• Double slash comments (//) will result in parsing error. Use standard CSS comments instead (/* */). It is definitelly possible to add support for double slash comment, but let's use standard CSS as much as possible

• Source maps won't work or could not be trusted. I did not disable them on purpose. But did not test them at all. Because of the way we need handle css helpers within styled component, source.end positions on a node might change if css AST changes. See “How it works” section on stringifying for more info.

Acknowledgements

PostCSS for tokenizer, parser, stringifier and tests for them.

Prettier for styled-components detection function in an ESTree AST.