Stylus ships with the stylus
executable for converting Stylus to CSS.
Usage: stylus [options] [command] [< in [> out]]
[file|dir ...]
Commands:
help <prop> Opens help info for <prop> in
your default browser. (OS X only)
Options:
-u, --use <path> Utilize the stylus plugin at <path>
-i, --interactive Start interactive REPL
-w, --watch Watch file(s) for changes and re-compile
-o, --out <dir> Output to <dir> when passing files
-C, --css <src> [dest] Convert CSS input to Stylus
-I, --include <path> Add <path> to lookup paths
-c, --compress Compress CSS output
-d, --compare Display input along with output
-f, --firebug Emits debug infos in the generated css that
can be used by the FireStylus Firebug plugin
-l, --line-numbers Emits comments in the generated CSS
indicating the corresponding Stylus line
-V, --version Display the version of Stylus
-h, --help Display help information
stylus
reads from stdin and outputs to stdout, so for example:
$ stylus --compress < some.styl > some.css
Try Stylus some in the terminal! Type below and press CTRL-D
for __EOF__
:
$ stylus
body
color red
font 14px Arial, sans-serif
stylus
also accepts files and directories. For example, a directory named css
will compile and output .css
files in the same directory.
$ stylus css
The following will output to ./public/stylesheets
:
$ stylus css --out public/stylesheets
Or a few files:
$ stylus one.styl two.styl
For development purposes, you can use the linenos
option to emit comments indicating
the Stylus filename and line number in the generated CSS:
$ stylus --line-numbers <path>
Or the firebug
option if you want to use
the FireStylus extension for Firebug:
$ stylus --firebug <path>
If you wish to convert CSS to the terse Stylus syntax, use the --css
flag.
Via stdio:
$ stylus --css < test.css > test.styl
Output a .styl
file of the same basename:
$ stylus --css test.css
Output to a specific destination:
$ stylus --css test.css /tmp/out.styl
On OS X, stylus help <prop>
will open your default browser and display help documentation for the given <prop>
.
$ stylus help box-shadow
The Stylus REPL (Read-Eval-Print-Loop) or "interactive shell" allows you to play around with Stylus expressions directly from your terminal.
Note that this works only for expressions—not selectors, etc. To use simple add the -i
, or --interactive
flag:
$ stylus -i
> color = white
=> #fff
> color - rgb(200,50,0)
=> #37cdff
> color
=> #fff
> color -= rgb(200,50,0)
=> #37cdff
> color
=> #37cdff
> rgba(color, 0.5)
=> rgba(55,205,255,0.5)
For this example we'l use the nib Stylus plugin to illustrate its CLI usage.
Suppose we have the following Stylus, which imports nib to use its linear-gradient()
function.
@import 'nib'
body
background: linear-gradient(20px top, white, black)
Our first attempt to render using stylus(1)
via stdio might look like this:
$ stylus < test.styl
Which would yield the following error (because Stylus doesn't know where to find nib).
Error: stdin:3
1|
2|
> 3| @import 'nib'
4|
5| body
6| background: linear-gradient(20px top, white, black)
For plugins that simply supply Stylus APIs, we could add the path to the Stylus lookup paths. We do so by using the --include
or -I
flag:
$ stylus < test.styl --include ../nib/lib
Now yielding the output below. (As you might notice, calls to gradient-data-uri()
and create-gradient-image()
output as literals. This is because exposing the library path isn't enough when a plugin provides a JavaScript API. However, if we only wanted to use pure-Stylus nib functions, we'd be fine.)
body {
background: url(gradient-data-uri(create-gradient-image(20px, top)));
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0, #fff), color-stop(1, #000));
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #fff 0%, #000 100%);
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #fff 0%, #000 100%);
background: linear-gradient(top, #fff 0%, #000 100%);
}
So, what we need to do is use the --use
, or -u
flag. It expects a path to a node module (with or without the .js
extension). This require()
s the module, expecting a function to be exported as module.exports
, which then calls style.use(fn())
to expose the plugin (defining its js functions, etc.).
$ stylus < test.styl --use ../nib/lib/nib
Yielding the expected result:
body {
background: url("data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAAUCAYAAABMDlehAAAABmJLR0QA/wD/AP+gvaeTAAAAI0lEQVQImWP4+fPnf6bPnz8zMH358oUBwkIjKJBgYGNj+w8Aphk4blt0EcMAAAAASUVORK5CYII=");
background: -webkit-gradient(linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0, #fff), color-stop(1, #000));
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #fff 0%, #000 100%);
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #fff 0%, #000 100%);
background: linear-gradient(top, #fff 0%, #000 100%);
}