esbuild-sass-plugin

What is esbuild-sass-plugin?

The esbuild-sass-plugin is an npm package that integrates Sass/SCSS compilation into the esbuild bundler. It allows developers to seamlessly compile Sass/SCSS files into CSS during the build process, leveraging the speed and efficiency of esbuild.

What are esbuild-sass-plugin's main functionalities?

Basic Sass/SCSS Compilation

This feature allows you to compile Sass/SCSS files into CSS as part of the esbuild process. The code sample demonstrates how to set up esbuild with the esbuild-sass-plugin to bundle JavaScript and compile Sass/SCSS files.

const esbuild = require('esbuild');
const sassPlugin = require('esbuild-sass-plugin').sassPlugin;

esbuild.build({
  entryPoints: ['src/index.js'],
  bundle: true,
  outfile: 'dist/bundle.js',
  plugins: [sassPlugin()]
}).catch(() => process.exit(1));

Custom Sass Options

This feature allows you to pass custom options to the Sass compiler. The code sample shows how to configure the plugin to include additional paths and enable indented syntax for Sass files.

const esbuild = require('esbuild');
const sassPlugin = require('esbuild-sass-plugin').sassPlugin;

esbuild.build({
  entryPoints: ['src/index.js'],
  bundle: true,
  outfile: 'dist/bundle.js',
  plugins: [sassPlugin({
    includePaths: ['./src/styles'],
    indentedSyntax: true
  })]
}).catch(() => process.exit(1));

Source Maps

This feature enables source map generation for easier debugging of Sass/SCSS files. The code sample demonstrates how to configure esbuild to generate source maps along with the compiled CSS.

const esbuild = require('esbuild');
const sassPlugin = require('esbuild-sass-plugin').sassPlugin;

esbuild.build({
  entryPoints: ['src/index.js'],
  bundle: true,
  outfile: 'dist/bundle.js',
  sourcemap: true,
  plugins: [sassPlugin()]
}).catch(() => process.exit(1));

Other packages similar to esbuild-sass-plugin

sass

The 'sass' package is a standalone Sass compiler that can be used with various build tools. Unlike esbuild-sass-plugin, it does not integrate directly with esbuild but can be used in conjunction with other tools to achieve similar results.

node-sass

The 'node-sass' package is another popular Sass compiler that uses the LibSass library. It is similar to the 'sass' package but is often used in older projects. It does not integrate directly with esbuild but can be used with other build tools.

sass-loader

The 'sass-loader' package is a loader for webpack that compiles Sass/SCSS files. It is similar in functionality to esbuild-sass-plugin but is designed specifically for webpack rather than esbuild.

README

A plugin for esbuild to handle Sass & SCSS files.

Features

• support for constructable stylesheet to be used in custom elements or dynamic style to be added to the html page
• comes with Dart Sass but can be easily switched to node-sass
• caching
• PostCSS & CSS modules

Install

$ npm i esbuild-sass-plugin

Usage

Just add it to your esbuild plugins:

import {sassPlugin} from "esbuild-sass-plugin";

await esbuild.build({
    ...
    plugins: [sassPlugin()]
});

this will use loader: "css" and your transpiled Sass will be included in index.css.

If you specify type: "style" then the stylesheet will be dynamically added to the page.

If you want to use the resulting css text as a string import you can use type: "css-text"

await esbuild.build({
    ...
    plugins: [sassPlugin({
        type: "css-text",
        ... // other options for sass.renderSync(...)
    })]
});

...and in your module do something like

...
import cssText from "./styles.scss";
...
customElements.define("hello-world", class HelloWorld extends HTMLElement {

    constructor() {
        super();
        this.attachShadow({mode: 'open'});
        this.sheet = new CSSStyleSheet();
        this.sheet.replaceSync(cssText);
        this.shadowRoot.adoptedStyleSheets = [this.sheet];
    }
}

Or you can import a lit-element css result using type: "lit-css"

...
import styles from "./styles.scss";
...
@customElement("hello-world")
export default class HelloWorld extends LitElement {

    static styles = styles

    render() {
        ...
    }
}

Look in the test folder for more usage examples.

Options

The options passed to the plugin are a superset of the Sass Options.

Option	Type	Default
cache	boolean or Map	true
type	string or array*	"css"
implementation	string	"sass"
transform	function	undefined
exclude	regex or function	undefined
importer	function	undefined
importMapper	function	undefined

WARNING: The array version of type is deprecated

It was meant to have different loaders for different parts of the code passing an array to type where each item was:

• the type (one of: css, css-text, lit-css or style)
• a valid picomatch glob, an array of one such glob or an array of two.

e.g. You can still do:

await esbuild.build({
    ...
    plugins: [sassPlugin({
        type: [                                     // this is somehow like a case 'switch'...
            ["css", "bootstrap/**"],                // ...all bootstrap SCSS files (args.path) 
            ["style", ["src/nomod/**"]],            // ...all files imported from files in 'src/nomod' (args.importer) 
            ["style", ["**/index.ts","**/*.scss"]], // all scss files imported from files name index.ts (both params)
            ["lit-css"]                             // this matches all, similar to a case 'default'
        ],
    })]
})

...but I am planning to remove this complicated way of defining different behaviours in v2.0
I haven't decided the new option format yet but, please, try and use the single string version of type
and rely on exclude to switch behaviour if possible!

have a look at the exclude fixture for an example where lit CSS and CSS modules are both used in the same app

Exclude Option

Used to exclude paths from the plugin. It can either be a simple regex which applies to the path

await esbuild.build({
    ...
    plugins: [sassPlugin({
        exclude: /^http:\/\//,  // ignores urls
    })]
})

or a function which receives the whole set of args that esbuild passes on resolve.

await esbuild.build({
    ...
    plugins: [sassPlugin({
        exclude: ({resolveDir}) => !/\\lit$/.test(resolveDir),  // ignores files outside lit directory
    })]
})

Importer Option

The default importer built in the plugin has been developed to be fast but its scope is limited. For complex import scenarios (e.g pnpm) this can be replaced by a custom implementation like the very solid sass-extended-importer

const {createImporter} = require("sass-extended-importer");

await esbuild.build({
    ...
    plugins: [sassPlugin({
        importer: createImporter()
    })]
})

There's a working example of using pnpm with @material design in issue/38

ImportMapper Option

A function to customize/re-map the import path, both import statements in JavaScript/TypeScript code and @import in Sass/SCSS are covered.
You can use this option to re-map import paths like tsconfig's paths option.

e.g. given this tsconfig.json which maps image files paths

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "baseUrl": ".", 
    "paths": {
      "@img/*": ["./assets/images/*"]
    }
  }
}

now you can resolve these paths with importMapper

await esbuild.build({
    ...
    plugins: [sassPlugin({
        importMapper: (path) => path.replace(/^@img\//,"./assets/images/")
    })]
})

Transform Option

async (css:string, resolveDir:string?) => string

It's a function which will be invoked before passing the css to esbuild or wrapping it in a module.
It can be used to do PostCSS processing and/or to create modules like in the following examples.

PostCSS

The simplest use case is to invoke PostCSS like this:

const postcss = require("postcss");
const autoprefixer = require("autoprefixer");
const postcssPresetEnv = require("postcss-preset-env");

esbuild.build({
    ...
    plugins: [sassPlugin({
        async transform(source, resolveDir) {
            const {css} = await postcss([autoprefixer, postcssPresetEnv({stage:0})]).process(source);
            return css;
        }
    })]
});

CSS Modules

A helper function is available to do all the work of calling PostCSS to create a CSS module. The usage is something like:

const {sassPlugin, postcssModules} = require("esbuild-sass-plugin");

esbuild.build({
    ...
    plugins: [sassPlugin({
        transform: postcssModules({
            // ...put here the options for postcss-modules: https://github.com/madyankin/postcss-modules
        })
    })]
});

NOTE: postcss and postcss-modules have to be added to your package.json.

postcssModules also accepts an optional array of plugins for PostCSS as second parameter.

Look into fixture/css-modules for the complete example.

NOTE: Since v1.5.0 transform can return either a string or an esbuild LoadResult object.
This gives the flexibility to implement that helper function.

Use node-sass instead of Dart Sass

Remember to add the dependency

$ npm i esbuild-sass-plugin node-sass

and to specify the implementation in the options:

await esbuild.build({
    ...
    plugins: [sassPlugin({
        implementation: "node-sass",
        ... // other options for sass.renderSync(...)
    })]
});

When compared to dart sass, node-sass is not only behind and lacking features but it's also behaving slightly differently. If you experience issues try and replace the built-in importer with magic importer which is slower but better suited for node-sass

const magicImporter = require('node-sass-magic-importer');

await esbuild.build({
    ...
    plugins: [sassPlugin({
        implementation: "node-sass",
        importer: magicImporter()
    })]
});

Caching

Chaching greatly improves the performance in incremental builds or watch mode.

It must be enabled with cache: true in the options.

You can pass your own map instead of true if you want to recycle it across different builds.

const pluginCache = new Map();

await esbuild.build({
    ...
    plugins: [sassPlugin({cache: pluginCache})],
    ...
})

Benchmarks

Given 24 × 24 = 576 lit-element files & 576 imported CSS styles

cache: true

initial build: 2.033s
incremental build: 1.199s     (one ts modified)
incremental build: 512.429ms  (same ts modified again)
incremental build: 448.871ms  (one scss modified)
incremental build: 448.92ms   (same scss modified)

cache: false

initial build: 1.961s
incremental build: 1.986s     (touch 1 ts)
incremental build: 1.336s     (touch 1 ts)
incremental build: 1.069s     (touch 1 scss)
incremental build: 1.061s     (touch 1 scss)

node-sass

initial build: 1.030s
incremental build: 468.677ms  (one ts modified) 
incremental build: 347.55ms   (same ts modified again)
incremental build: 401.264ms  (one scss modified)
incremental build: 364.649ms  (same scss modified)