Atomic CSS-in-JS, in the style attribute.
Type-safe static styles with theming, responsive variant support, and no bundler integration.
CSS-in-JS solutions that rely on style injection won't be recommended by the React team going forward, and instead they suggest the following:
Our preferred solution is to use
<link rel="stylesheet">
for statically extracted styles and plain inline styles for dynamic values. E.g.<div style={{...}}>
In other words—write CSS like we used to. But what about the benefits that CSS-in-JS gave us?
There are CSS-in-JS solutions that extract static rules from your template files into external .css
files, however, these approaches often require bundler integration and come with build-time limitations.
The learning curve can be intimidating but developers invest regardless so they can have type errors and intellisense for their design system tokens as well as style deduping, critical path CSS, scoping, and composition.
Tailwind CSS adopts a different strategy to achieve these goals:
- We can style inline to prototype quickly
- Editor extensions for intellisense based on your theme
- Statically generated styles with a simple CLI script, no bundler integration
- Atomic CSS so styles have a cap on how large they can grow
On the flip side:
- Removing values from your theme won't flag redundant references
- We must memorise Tailwind's custom class names which spawns things like the Tailwind Cheatsheet
- Specificity issues when composing unless we use third-party packages like tailwind-merge
- Styling inline can be unpleasant to maintain, resulting in third-party packages like cva
- Classes must exist as complete unbroken strings
- Debugging in dev tools is tricky because styles are spread across atomic classes
Tokenami aims to improve some of these areas by using CSS variables instead of CSS properties in the style
attribute, and bringing all necessary tools under one roof. It features:
- Simple naming convention—use the CSS properties you already know, prefixed with double-dash
- Smaller stylesheet made possible by atomic CSS variables
- Config file for defining your theme
- Feature-rich intellisense when authoring styles
- A tiny
css
utility with variants, and responsive variants support - Seamless composition across component boundaries using the
css
utility - Runtime style support e.g.
style={css({ '--color': props.color })}
- Aliasable properties e.g.
style={css({ '--p': 4 })}
for padding - Custom selector support enabling sibling or descendant selectors
- Improved debugging experience in dev tools
- Statically generated styles
- No bundler integration
Warning
This is a pre-alpha version of tokenami so there will be bugs, breaking changes, and missing features. Please check the existing issues for planned features/known bugs before creating new ones.
tokenami-demo.mp4
Tokenami offers a CLI tool for generating static styles, a ~3kb CSS utility for authoring your styles, and a TypeScript plugin to enhance the developer experience.
Install using your package manager of choice. For example:
npm install @tokenami/dev @tokenami/ts-plugin -D
npm install @tokenami/css
And then initialise your tokenami project:
npx tokenami init
Add Tokenami to include
and plugins
in your tsconfig.json
or jsconfig.json
.
{
"include": [".tokenami/tokenami.env.d.ts", "**/*.ts", "**/*.tsx"],
"compilerOptions": {
"plugins": [{ "name": "@tokenami/ts-plugin" }]
}
}
Make sure your editor is configured to use the project's version of TypeScript. You can find instructions for various editors in their documentation, such as for VSCode here.
Run the CLI tool to scan your template files for tokenami properties and build your CSS. This would usually exist as a script in your package.json
.
npx tokenami --output ./public/styles.css --watch
Make sure to adjust the output path to your desired location for styles. It will use ./public/tokenami.css
by default if omitted.
Reference your output CSS file in the <head>
of your document, and start styling inline with Tokenami properties:
import { css } from '@tokenami/css';
function Page() {
return <h1 style={css({ '--margin-top': 0, '--margin-bottom': 5 })}>Hello, World!</h1>;
}
Tokenami relies on your theme to provide design system constraints. Since there's no predefined theme, you need to add your own to the .tokenami/tokenami.config
. For example:
module.exports = createConfig({
// ...
responsive: {
medium: '@media (min-width: 700px)',
large: '@media (min-width: 1024px)',
},
theme: {
color: {
'slate-100': '#f1f5f9',
'slate-700': '#334155',
'sky-500': '#0ea5e9',
},
radii: {
rounded: '10px',
circle: '9999px',
none: 'none',
},
},
});
The keys in your responsive
and theme
objects can be anything you wish. These keys will be used to name your tokens (more on this later).
With your theme set up, there are only a few rules to remember:
- A Tokenami property is any CSS property prefixed with double dash, e.g.
--font-size
. Use---
(triple dash) to add custom CSS variables to an element. - A Tokenami token is any theme key followed by a value identifier, separated by an underscore. For example, a
color
object in theme with ared-100
entry maps tovar(--color_red-100)
. - Properties can include selectors like media queries, pseudo-classes, and pseudo-elements separated with an underscore. For instance,
--hover_background-color
,--md_hover_background-color
.
Tokenami uses a grid value for spacing. Properties like padding and margin are multiples of this when passed a numeric value. For example, with a grid set to 4px
, using --padding: 2
adds 8px
of padding to your element.
By default, Tokenami sets the grid to 0.25rem
but you can override it:
module.exports = createConfig({
// ...
grid: '10px',
});
You can avoid TypeScript errors for one-off inline values by using a triple dash fallback. For instance, --padding: var(---, 20px)
prevents errors and sets padding to 20px
.
Tokenami intentionally adds friction to the developer experience here. This is to encourage sticking to your theme guidelines and to help you quickly spot values in your code that don't.
Define responsive rules in the responsive
object in your config. This can include @container
queries:
module.exports = createConfig({
// ...
responsive: {
medium: '@media (min-width: 1024px)',
'medium-self': '@container (min-width: 400px)',
},
});
Use by following the property spec:
<div style={css({ '--medium_padding': 4 })} />
Responsive rules can also be combined with selectors:
<div style={css({ '--medium_hover_padding': 4 })} />
For documentation on responsive variants, refer to the CSS compose section.
Add keyframes to your config and reference them in your theme:
module.exports = createConfig({
// ...
keyframes: {
wiggle: {
'0%, 100%': { transform: 'rotate(-3deg)' },
'50%': { transform: 'rotate(3deg)' },
},
},
theme: {
anim: {
wiggle: 'wiggle 1s ease-in-out infinite',
},
},
});
Use by following the token spec:
<div style={css({ '--animation': 'var(--anim_wiggle)' })} />
Tokenami provides a CSS utility to author your styles and correctly merge them across component boundaries.
The css
utility accepts your base styles as the first parameter, and then any number of overrides as additional parameters.
function Button({ size, style, ...props }) {
return <button {...props} style={css({ '--padding': 4 }, props.style)} />;
}
In the above example, we're passing props.style
as an override to ensure composed styles will merge correctly across component boundaries.
Overrides can be applied conditionally and last override wins. They are applied as additional parameters to the css
utility.
function Button({ style, ...props }) {
const disabled = props.disabled && { '--opacity': 0.5 };
return <button {...props} style={css({ '--p': 4 }, disabled, style)} />;
}
Use the css.compose
API to author variants.
const button = css.compose({
'--padding': 4,
variants: {
size: {
small: { '--padding': 2 },
large: { '--padding': 6 },
},
},
});
function Button({ size, style, ...props }) {
return <button {...props} style={button({ size }, style)} />;
}
The function returned by css.compose
accepts your chosen variants as the first parameter, and then any number of overrides as additional parameters.
Responsive variants allow you to prefix the variant name with a responsive key from your configuration. For example, the following button will apply the large size
variant at the medium breakpoint:
function Button() {
return <button style={button({ medium_size: 'large' })} />;
}
To enable it, rename the variants
property to responsiveVariants
. This will generate the atomic CSS for the responsive variants regardless of whether they're used, so it is purposefully opt-in to allow greater control.
const button = css.compose({
'--padding': 4,
- variants: {
+ responsiveVariants: {
size: {
small: { '--padding': 2 },
large: { '--padding': 6 },
},
},
});
Use the Variants
type to extend your component prop types:
import { type Variants } from '@tokenami/css';
type ButtonElementProps = React.ComponentPropsWithoutRef<'button'>;
interface ButtonProps extends ButtonElementProps, Variants<typeof styles.button> {}
Use TokenamiStyle
to accept the css
utility as a value for the style
prop. This prevents errors when props.style
is used for overrides.
import { type TokenamiStyle, css } from '@tokenami/css';
interface ButtonProps extends TokenamiStyle<React.ComponentProps<'button'>> {}
function Button(props: ButtonProps) {
return <button {...props} style={css({}, props.style)} />;
}
Tokenami provides some common default selectors for you but you can define your own custom selectors in the selectors
object of your config.
Use the ampersand (&
) to specify where the current element's selector should be injected:
const { createConfig, defaultConfig } = require('@tokenami/css');
module.exports = createConfig({
// ...
selectors: {
...defaultConfig.selectors,
'parent-hover': '.parent:hover > &',
},
});
Use by following the property spec:
<div className="parent">
<img src="..." alt="" />
<button style={css({ '--parent-hover_font-weight': 'bold' })} />
</div>
Selectors can also be combined with responsive rules:
<button style={css({ '--medium_parent-hover_font-weight': 'bold' })} />
Use an array value for custom selectors to generate nested rules:
module.exports = createConfig({
// ...
selectors: {
...defaultConfig.selectors,
hover: ['@media (hover: hover) and (pointer: fine)', '&:hover'],
},
});
This example will apply hover styles for users with a precise pointing device, such as a mouse, when --hover_{property}
is used.
Aliases allow you to create shorthand names for properties or other aliases. When using custom aliases, the css
utility must be configured to ensure aliased properties are merged correctly across component boundaries.
Create a file in your project to configure the utility. You can name this file however you like, e.g. css.ts
:
// css.ts
import { createCss } from '@tokenami/css';
import config from '../.tokenami/tokenami.config';
export const css = createCss(config);
Use the css
utility exported from the file you created and it will handle aliases correctly.
The configuration expects the name of your new alias followed by an array of properties they map to.
module.exports = createConfig({
// ...
aliases: {
p: ['padding'],
px: ['padding-left', 'padding-right'],
py: ['padding-top', 'padding-bottom'],
pt: ['padding-top'],
pr: ['padding-right'],
pb: ['padding-bottom'],
pl: ['padding-left'],
},
});
With the above config, px
is shorthand for padding-left
and padding-right
. This allows the css
utility to apply padding on the left and right when --px
is used.
Tokenami provides sensible defaults to restrict which values can be passed to properties based on your theme. For instance, --border-color
will only accept tokens from your color
object in theme, --padding
allows multiples of your grid, and --height
expects tokens from a size
key or multiples of your grid.
You can customise the default configuration by overriding the properties
object:
const { createConfig, defaultConfig } = require('@tokenami/css');
module.exports = createConfig({
theme: {
container: {
half: '50%',
},
pet: {
cat: '"🐱"',
dog: '"🐶"',
},
},
properties: {
...defaultConfig.properties,
width: ['grid', 'container'],
height: ['grid', 'container'],
content: ['pet'],
},
});
With this configuration, using '--content': 'var(--container_half)'
would error because container
does not exist in the property config for content
, but '--content': 'var(--pet_dog)'
would be allowed:
<div
style={css({
'--width': 75 /* 300px with a 4px grid */,
'--height': 'var(--container_half)',
'--after_content': 'var(--pet_cat)',
})}
/>
Tokenami only supports browserslist in your package.json
. You can use it to add autoprefixing to your CSS properties in the generated CSS file. However, it currently doesn't support vendor-prefixed values, which is being tracked in this issue.
Note
Tokenami does not support browsers below the listed supported browser versions.
To improve performance during development, Tokenami widens its types and uses the TypeScript plugin for completions. Using tsc
in the command line defaults to these widened types so it will not highlight errors for your properties or tokens. To get accurate types for CI, do the following:
Create a file named tsconfig.ci.json
or jsconfig.ci.json
. It should extend your original config and include the CI-specific Tokenami types:
{
"extends": "./tsconfig.json",
"include": [".tokenami/tokenami.env.ci.d.ts", "**/*.ts", "**/*.tsx"]
}
For CI, use tsc
with your new configuration:
tsc --noEmit --project tsconfig.ci.json
Before raising a bug, please double-check that it isn't already in my todo list. Some common pitfalls are listed below. If you need additional support or encounter any issues, please don't hesitate to join the Tokenami discord server.
Tokenami is in early stages of development and currently only supports applications built using React or SolidJS.
Tokenami relies on cascade layers so only supports browsers with @layer
support.
Edge |
Firefox |
Chrome |
Safari |
iOS Safari |
Opera |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
99+ | 97+ | 99+ | 15.4+ | 15.4+ | 86+ |
When adding the stylesheet to the links
export, make sure to import it instead of referencing a path in the href
property:
import styles from '~/tokenami.css';
export const links: LinksFunction = () => [{ rel: 'stylesheet', href: styles }];
If your stylesheet is outside the remix app
directory, update remix.config.js
to include it in watchPaths
and update the import path appropriately.
- Paweł Błaszczyk (@pawelblaszczyk_)
A big thanks to:
- Tailwind CSS for inspiring most of the features in Tokenami
- Stitches for variants and responsive variants inspiration
- CSS Hooks for custom selectors inspiration
- Lightning CSS for generating the Tokenami stylesheet
Please do take the time to check these projects out if you feel Tokenami isn't quite right for you.