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tailwind-clj

A clojure library that processes tailwindcss utility classes, generates css rules and either writes the output to a css file or returns css data (suitable for css-in-js libraries such as emotion).

When developing client applications with ClojureScript and tailwind-clj

• you can use macros to only generate css for the tailwind utilities that you actually use
• you don't have to integrate any nodejs tooling into your dev flow
• customize tailwind with a tailwind.edn file on the classpath
• fits nicely with figwheel based development
• get a lot of the benefits of tailwind (see rationale below)

Project Status

The motivation for this library is to investigate the generation of Tailwind like utility classes on the fly directly with Clojure[Script] and is based on v1.0.0 of tailwind.

tailwind-clj does not support

• autoprefixer
• css minification
• tailwind plugins like custom-forms
• tailwind UI which requires a custom tailwind plugin / custom-forms

If any of the above are requirements then you'll likely be better off using the official tooling which does work with ClojureScript. For an example see https://github.com/mrmcc3/tailwind-cljs-example

If you're not interested in the nodejs tooling then read on.

Example

{:deps {mrmcc3/tailwind-clj {:git/url "https://github.com/mrmcc3/tailwind-clj.git"
                             :sha     "67dc8999aef155dc197b4f207932b658e4496d39"}}}

(ns tailwind.example
  (:require [tailwind.core :refer [tw! spit-css!]]))

(tw! "flex flex-col items-center" "py-3 m-4" :text-gray-800) ;; strings or keywords
;; => "flex flex-col items-center py-3 m-4 text-gray-800"

(spit-css! "styles.css")

$ clojure -m cljs.main -c tailwind.example

/*! normalize.css v8.0.1 | MIT License | github.com/necolas/normalize.css */html{line-height:1.15;-webkit-text-size-adjust:100%}body{margin:0}main{display:block}h1{font-size:2em;margin:.67em 0}hr{box-sizing:content-box;height:0;overflow:visible}pre{font-family:monospace,monospace;font-size:1em}a{background-color:transparent}abbr[title]{border-bottom:none;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline dotted}b,strong{font-weight:bolder}code,kbd,samp{font-family:monospace,monospace;font-size:1em}small{font-size:80%}sub,sup{font-size:75%;line-height:0;position:relative;vertical-align:baseline}sub{bottom:-.25em}sup{top:-.5em}img{border-style:none}button,input,optgroup,select,textarea{font-family:inherit;font-size:100%;line-height:1.15;margin:0}button,input{overflow:visible}button,select{text-transform:none}[type=button],[type=reset],[type=submit],button{-webkit-appearance:button}[type=button]::-moz-focus-inner,[type=reset]::-moz-focus-inner,[type=submit]::-moz-focus-inner,button::-moz-focus-inner{border-style:none;padding:0}[type=button]:-moz-focusring,[type=reset]:-moz-focusring,[type=submit]:-moz-focusring,button:-moz-focusring{outline:1px dotted ButtonText}fieldset{padding:.35em .75em .625em}legend{box-sizing:border-box;color:inherit;display:table;max-width:100%;padding:0;white-space:normal}progress{vertical-align:baseline}textarea{overflow:auto}[type=checkbox],[type=radio]{box-sizing:border-box;padding:0}[type=number]::-webkit-inner-spin-button,[type=number]::-webkit-outer-spin-button{height:auto}[type=search]{-webkit-appearance:textfield;outline-offset:-2px}[type=search]::-webkit-search-decoration{-webkit-appearance:none}::-webkit-file-upload-button{-webkit-appearance:button;font:inherit}details{display:block}summary{display:list-item}template{display:none}[hidden]{display:none}html{box-sizing:border-box;font-family:sans-serif}*,::after,::before{box-sizing:inherit}blockquote,dd,dl,figure,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,p,pre{margin:0}button{background:0 0;padding:0}button:focus{outline:1px dotted;outline:5px auto -webkit-focus-ring-color}fieldset{margin:0;padding:0}ol,ul{list-style:none;margin:0;padding:0}html{font-family:-apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,"Segoe UI",Roboto,"Helvetica Neue",Arial,"Noto Sans",sans-serif,"Apple Color Emoji","Segoe UI Emoji","Segoe UI Symbol","Noto Color Emoji";line-height:1.5}*,::after,::before{border-width:0;border-style:solid;border-color:#e2e8f0;}img{border-style:solid}textarea{resize:vertical}input::placeholder,textarea::placeholder{color:inherit;opacity:.5}[role=button],button{cursor:pointer}table{border-collapse:collapse}h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6{font-size:inherit;font-weight:inherit}a{color:inherit;text-decoration:inherit}button,input,optgroup,select,textarea{padding:0;line-height:inherit;color:inherit}code,kbd,pre,samp{font-family:"Ubuntu Mono",monospace;}audio,canvas,embed,iframe,img,object,svg,video{display:block;vertical-align:middle}img,video{max-width:100%;height:auto}

.flex{display:flex;}
.flex-col{flex-direction:column;}
.items-center{align-items:center;}
.m-4{margin:1rem;}
.py-3{padding-top:0.75rem;padding-bottom:0.75rem;}
.text-gray-800{color:#2d3748;}

You can also test the tw! macro at the command line

$ clj -m tailwind.core tw! font-mono
.font-mono{font-family:Menlo,Monaco,Consolas,"Liberation Mono","Courier New",monospace;}

dev/tailwind/examples.cljs has some example components from the tailwind site rendered using uix and emotion. result

Rationale

If you're unfamiliar with the rationale behind tailwind css read the utility first page from the tailwind docs. In short the idea is that you can generate a whole bunch of utility classes that in most cases correspond to a single css rule. By combining these classes in various ways you can create complex user interfaces. At first it seems cumbersome to add numerous classes to your markup but in practice some really nice benefits fall out of it.

• for the most you don't have to write or maintain any css
• you don't have to keep inventing class names
• you are constrained to the provided set of utility classes establishing a predefined design system. The result is visually consistent UIs
• After a while you get familiar with the standard utility classes speeding up the design process
• re-using standard utilities means your CSS stops growing over time
• making changes feels safer

One downside is that Tailwind has to generate css for every utility and its variants. Variants include a combination of pseudo classes and media queries which means the size of the resulting css has a combinatorial explosion. Tailwind minimizes the issue by carefully choosing the default set of utilities and disabling all but the most used variants. Even then you're looking at ~400KB of uncompressed css. A good portion of that is most likely unused. Tools like purgecss can help remove the unused classes.

In ClojureScript we can just generate the utility classes as we need them using macros at compile time. While we're at it we can make customization simpler by just dropping a tailwind.edn file somewhere on the classpath.

Configuration

The tailwind config/design system is built by first defining some base attributes like colors and spacing. Then the config is expanded by using the base definitions to define attributes like border-color, padding and margin.

• The default config before expansion is at src/tailwind/defaults.edn.
• To view the expanded default config clj -m tailwind.core default
• To drill down into the config pass extra args clj -m tailwind.core default colors blue

User customization

If you would like to customize the configuration then place a tailwind.edn file on the classpath with your customizations. This file will be read and merged with the default config before expansion using meta-merge.

For example {"spacing" {"perfect" "23px"}} would add perfect to spacing and all attributes that depend on it like margin and padding

$ clj -m tailwind.core tw! mb-perfect px-perfect
.mb-perfect{margin-bottom:23px;}
.px-perfect{padding-left:23px;padding-right:23px;}

If you prefer to completely replace the default spacing scale then the meta-merge hint ^:replace is what you want {"spacing" ^:replace {"perfect" "23px"}}

If you want to skip the expansion mechanism you can add an extra ^:final hint to a calculated attribute. For example {"padding" ^:replace ^:final {"perfect" "23px"}}