@kitschpatrol/vite-plugin-tldraw

@kitschpatrol/vite-plugin-tldraw

Overview

A Vite plugin to automate the import and conversion of local tldraw .tldr files into SVG or PNG image assets.

This allows .tldr files to be imported just like regular .webp, .jpeg etc. files in Vite-powered projects:

// main.ts
import tldrImage from './assets/test-sketch.tldr'

const body = document.querySelector<HTMLDivElement>('body')
if (body) body.innerHTML = `<img src="${tldrImage}" />`

The above transforms ./assets/test-sketch.tldr into ./assets/test-sketch-{hash}.svg, caches the output file, and then returns an SVG URL ready to be passed to an img element's src attribute.

The plugin also allows global configuration of several aspects of the conversion process, and individual import paths may set search / query parameters to define conversion options a per-import basis, e.g.:

import tldrImage from './assets/test-sketch.tldr?format=png&tldr'

For lower-level processing of .tldr files in Node projects or via the command line, please see @kitschpatrol/tldraw-cli.

Installation

1. Add the dependency

Assuming you're starting with a Vite project of some flavor:

npm install --save-dev @kitschpatrol/vite-plugin-tldraw

2. Add the plugin to your vite.config file

// vite.config.ts
import tldrPlugin from '@kitschpatrol/vite-plugin-tldraw'
import { defineConfig } from 'vite'

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [tldrPlugin()],
})

3. Configure TypeScript

Skip this step if you're using plain JavaScript.

Add the extension declarations to your types in tsconfig.json:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "types": ["@kitschpatrol/vite-plugin-tldraw/ext"]
  }
}

Alternately, you can add a triple-slash package dependency directive to your global types file (e.g. env.d.ts or similar):

/// <reference types="@kitschpatrol/vite-plugin-tldraw/ext" />

This step should take care of errors like:

Cannot find module './assets/test-sketch.tldr' or its corresponding type declarations.ts(2307)'

Usage

Save your tldraw project to a .tldr file.

Add it to your project, most likely in an assets folder.

Then simply import the .tldr file to get a working asset url:

// example.ts
import tldrImage from './assets/test-sketch.tldr'

// logs a working svg url
console.log(tldrImage)

See the sections below for additional conversion options.

Plugin Options

vite-plugin-tldraw inherits most of the configuration flags available in @kitschpatrol/tldraw-cli.

TldrawPluginOptions

Key	Type	Description	Default
cacheEnabled	boolean	Caches generated image files. Hashes based on the source .tldr content and any TldrawImageOptions or import query parameters used and automatically regenerates as needed. Cached files are stored in Vite's config.cacheDir (usually /node_modules/.vite).	true
defaultImageOptions	TldrawImageOptions	Default options object for all the image conversion process. See section below for more detail.	See below
verbose	boolean	Log information about the conversion process to the console.	false

TldrawImageOptions

Key	Type	Description	Default
darkMode	boolean	Output a dark theme version of the image.	false
format	"png" | "svg"	Output image format.	"svg"
stripStyle	boolean	Remove <style> elements from SVG output, useful to lighten the load of embedded fonts or if you are providing your own stylesheet for the SVG.	false
transparent	boolean	Output image with a transparent background.	false

Plugin options example

Configure the plugin to always generate PNGs with a transparent background, and to log conversion details:

// vite.config.ts
import tldrPlugin from '@kitschpatrol/vite-plugin-tldraw'
import { defineConfig } from 'vite'

export default defineConfig({
  // By default,
  plugins: [tldrPlugin({ verbose: true, format: 'png', transparent: true })],
})

The @kitschpatrol/vite-plugin-tldraw also exports TldrawPluginOptions and TldrawImageOptions types for your convenience.

Import path options

Import directives may include query parameters to set image conversion options on a per-import basis.

Query parameters take precedence over TldrawPluginOptions set at plugin instantiation in your vite.config.ts.

Note: Due to constraints in TypeScript's module declaration wildcards, the import path must be suffixed with &tldr or &tldraw when query parameters are used.

Additional query parameter options

In addition to all TldrawImageOptions, query parameters also accept a frame option:

Key	Type	Description	Default
frame	string | undefined	When defined, outputs only a specific frame from the .tldr file. Provide either the frame name or its shape ID, e.g. Frame 1. Slugified frame names will also match, e.g. frame-1.	undefined

Import path query parameter examples

// example.ts
import tldrImagePng from './assets/test-sketch.tldr?format=png&tldr'
import tldrImageTransparentPng from './assets/test-sketch.tldr?format=png&transparent=true&tldr'
import tldrImageFrame from './assets/test-sketch-three-frames.tldr?frame=frame-1&tldr'

// logs a png url
console.log(tldrImagePng)

// logs a transparent-background png url
console.log(tldrImageTransparentPng)

// logs an svg url for "Frame 1" in the source .tldr
console.log(tldrImageFrame)

Implementation notes

This tool is not a part of the official tldraw project, and it is currently only tested and known to be compatible with tldraw 2.0.0-beta.2.

Behind the scenes, the plugin calls @kitschpatrol/tldraw-cli's Node API to generate image files from .tldr files, and then passes the resulting URL as the value of the module import.

Because tldraw-cli relies on Puppeteer, conversion can be a bit slow (on the order of a second or two), so by default generated image assets are cached to expedite subsequent builds.

During development, images are served from the cache, and when Vite builds for production the image files are bundled into the output with a hashed filename to simplify cache busting.

The future

Possible paths for future improvements include the following:

• Rollup cross-compatibility
• Support importing tldraw.com URLs
• SVG compression, PNG resizing / optimization (or test integration with other asset pipeline plugins)

Any other suggestions are welcome.

I'm consciously releasing this tool under the @kitschpatrol namespace on NPM to leave the vite-plugin-tldraw package name available to the core tldraw project.

References

Some reference links and issues from development are retained for my own reference below:

TypeScript module compatibility with URLSearchParams:

• https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/issues/38638
• https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/modules/reference.html#ambient-modules
• https://github.com/JonasKruckenberg/imagetools/issues/70
• https://github.com/JonasKruckenberg/imagetools/issues/160

Vite asset plugin approach:

• https://github.com/vitejs/vite/discussions/7515
• https://liana.one/custom-language-plugin-for-vite
• https://github.com/UstymUkhman/vite-plugin-glsl

Vite asset Path issues:

• https://github.com/vitejs/vite/issues/2394
• https://github.com/vitejs/vite/issues/1997