RECESS

Developed at Twitter to support our internal styleguide, RECESS is a simple, attractive code quality tool for CSS built on top of LESS.

Incorporate it into your development process as a linter, or integrate it directly into your build system as a compiler, RECESS will keep your source looking clean and super manageable.

GENERAL USE

$ recess [path] [options]

OPTIONS

• –compile - compiles your code and outputs it to the terminal. Fixes white space and sort order. Can compile css or less.
• –compress - compress your compiled code.
• –config - accepts a path, which specifies a json config object
• –format - control the output format of errors:
  • –format text - the default format, shows errors and context
  • –format compact - show errors one-error-per-line, useful for IDE integration
• –noSummary - don’t output the summary block for each file
• –includePath - accepts an additional directory path to look for @import:ed LESS files in.
• –stripColors - removes color from output (useful when logging)
• –watch - watch filesystem for changes, useful when compiling Less projects
• –noIDs - doesn’t complain about using IDs in your stylesheets
• –noJSPrefix - doesn’t complain about styling .js- prefixed classnames
• –noOverqualifying - doesn’t complain about overqualified selectors (ie: div#foo.bar)
• –noUnderscores - doesn’t complain about using underscores in your class names
• –noUniversalSelectors - doesn’t complain about using the universal * selector
• –prefixWhitespace - adds whitespace prefix to line up vender prefixed properties
• –strictPropertyOrder - doesn’t looking into your property ordering
• –zeroUnits - doesn’t complain if you add units to values of 0

EXAMPLES

Lint all css files

$ recess *.css

Lint file, ignore styling of IDs

$ recess ./bootstrap.css --noIds false

Lint file with compact output and no color

$ recess ./bootstrap.css --format compact --stripColors

Compile and compress .less file, then output it to a new file

$ recess ./bootstrap.less --compress > ./bootstrap-production.css

Watch a directory for changes and auto compile a css file from the changes. experimental

$ recess input.less:ouput.css --watch watch/this/dir/for/changes

Watch a single file for changes and auto compile a css file from the changes. experimental

$ recess input.less:ouput.css --watch

PROGRAMMATIC API

Recess provides a pretty simple programmatic api.

var recess = require('recess')

Once you’ve required recess, just pass it a path (or array of paths) and an optional options object and an optional callback:

recess(['../fat.css', '../twitter.css'], { compile: true }, callback)

The following options (and defaults) are available in the programatic api:

• compile: false
• compress: false
• includePath: []
• noIDs: true
• noJSPrefix: true
• noOverqualifying: true
• noUnderscores: true
• noUniversalSelectors: true
• prefixWhitespace: true
• strictPropertyOrder: true
• stripColors: false
• zeroUnits: true

The callback is fired when each instance has finished processessing an input. The callback is passed an array of of instances (one for each path). The instances have a bunch of useful things on them like the raw data and an array of output strings.

When compiling, access the compiled source through the output property:

var recess = require('recess')

recess('./js/fat.css', { compile: true }, function (err, obj) {
  if (err) throw err
  console.log(
      obj // recess instance for fat.css
  , obj.output // array of loggable content
  , obj.errors // array of failed lint rules
  )
})

INSTALLATION

To install recess you need both node and npm installed.

$ npm install recess -g

AUTHORS

• Jacob Thornton: https://twitter.com/fat

LICENSE

Copyright 2012-2013 Twitter, Inc.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0