How can I use Tailwind in my ClojureScript web app?

Technical ClojureScript ClojureCLI TailwindCSS

Software Engineering Team Lead and Director of Cloudsure

Saturday, 20 November 2021 · Estimated 5 minute read

The goal of this guide is to create a ClojureScript web application with Clojure CLI and integrate with Tailwind CSS. If you are looking to create a shadow-cljs project then you can follow this guide by Jacek Schae.

There are a few assumptions and they are that you are already familiar with

You can use the [template][cljs-app-with-tailwindcss] on GitHub if you want the complete solution.

Versions of dependencies used in this guide

Below are a list of versions of dependencies used in this guide so that you can follow along without experiencing potential breaking changes when upgrading to the latest dependencies.

These are dependencies covered in the previous guide where we created a ClojureScript web app from scratch with Reagent and npm.

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| Dependency        | Version     |
|-------------------|-------------|
| Clojure           | 1.10.3.1020 |
| ClojureScript     |    1.10.879 |
| Node              |     16.13.0 |
| npm/npx           |       8.1.3 |
| Webpack           |      5.64.1 |
| Webpack-cli       |       4.9.1 |
| Figwheel-Main     |      0.2.15 |

These dependencies are covered in this guide.

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| Dependency        | Version     |
|-------------------|-------------|
| Tailwind CSS      |      2.2.19 |
| PostCSS           |      8.3.11 |
| PostCSS CLI       |       9.0.2 |
| PostCSS Import    |      14.0.2 |
| Autprefixer       |      10.4.0 |
| Cross Env         |       7.0.3 |
| npm run all       |       4.1.5 |

Getting started

The code in this guide will be based on my previous guide. To follow along you can either:

Use the guide.

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mkdir clj-app-with-tailwind && cd clj-app-with-tailwind

Or use the template on GitHub. Click on the green Use this template button. Choose a snazzy name for your project. If you get stuck you can use clj-app-with-tailwind. Clone it.

Command line tools

In this tutorial we are going to leverage npm scripts. There are a few CLI tools that we will need to install in order to make our scripts work.

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npm install --save-dev npm-run-all@4.1.5 cross-env@7.0.3 postcss-cli@9.0.2

npm-run-all will run multiple scripts in parallel. We'll be generating Tailwind's CSS file and running Figwheel both with hot reloading.
cross-env will set environment variables that we will use in our run scripts.
postcss-cli will run PostCSS which will process and generate our Tailwind CSS file that we will reference in our app.

Running the project

Let's start by creating our npm run scripts. For now we only need one. We are taking this route because things are going to get more complicated as we do more later on.

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// package.json
"scripts": {
  "develop": "clj -M:dev"
},

Run the script. It will do exactly the same as if we manually entered clj -M:dev.

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npm run develop

Installing Tailwind

Installing dependencies

I followed the instructions to install Tailwind as a PostCSS plugin.

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npm install --save-dev tailwindcss@2.2.19 postcss@8.3.11 postcss-import@14.0.2 autoprefixer@10.4.0

PostCSS is a tool for transforming CSS with JavaScript.
PostCSS Import is a PostCSS plugin to transform @import rules by inlining content.
Autoprefixer is a CSS post-processor that automatically adds vendor-prefixed CSS properties based on the browser capabilities.

Preprocessing

The Tailwind guide suggests that you should highly consider relying on other PostCSS plugins to add the preprocessor features you use instead of using a separate preprocessor.

Let's configure the basic ones. Create a postcss.config.js file in your project root directory.

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// postcss.config.js
module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    require('postcss-import'),
    require('tailwindcss'),
    require('autoprefixer'),
  ],
};

Creating your configuration file

Create a configuration file if you want to customize Tailwind.

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npx tailwindcss init

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// tailwind.config.js
module.exports = {
  purge: [],
  darkMode: false, // or 'media' or 'class'
  theme: {
    extend: {},
  },
  variants: {},
  plugins: [],
}

Note about production
Remember to purge when building for production, so that it will remove any unused classes for the smallest file size.

Including Tailwind in your CSS

Create a new CSS file at src/css/tailwind.css and put the following in it:

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/* src/css/tailwind.css */
@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;

Find out more about including Tailwind in your CSS.

Hot reloading

Updating the link to the CSS file

We are going to generate a new CSS file based on our Tailwind configuration.

In this guide we are going to output it straight to our dev target directory: ./target/public/cljs-out/dev/style.css In upcoming guides we will learn how to develop for different environments.

We will need to reference this file in our index.html file which will now look like this:

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<!-- resources/public/index.html -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
    <title>Example Application</title>
    <!--
      The new CSS file that will be generated in
      👇 `./target/public/cljs-out/dev/style.css`
    -->
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="./cljs-out/dev/style.css" />
  </head>
  <body class="bg-gray-900">
    <div id="app"></div>
    <!--
         Hardcoded Development Webpack Bundled JavaScript.
         Place the ClojureScript script tag as the last tag in the body.
         This is the convention for Google Closure compiled projects.
         https://figwheel.org/docs/your_own_page.html
    -->
    <script type="text/javascript" src="./cljs-out/dev/main_bundle.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

Updating the npm run scripts

Create two watch scripts to generate CSS and launch our Figwheel server. The develop script will run both of these scripts in parallel.

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// package.json
"scripts": {
  "postcss:watch": "cross-env TAILWIND_MODE=watch postcss src/css/tailwind.css -o ./target/public/cljs-out/dev/style.css --verbose -w",
  "figwheel:watch": "clj -M:dev",
  "develop": "run-p -l *:watch"
},

Testing the integration

Open src/example_app/core.cljs and change the app function as follows:

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(ns example-app.core
  (:require [reagent.dom :as r.dom]))


(defn a [to text]
  [:a.font-bold.text-yellow-300.hover:text-pink-600 {:href to} text])


(defn app []
  [:div
   [:div.p-8.max-w-full
    [:div.rounded-lg.bg-gray-800.text-white.shadow-xs.py-24.px-4.text-center
     [:div.text-3xl.lg:text-9xl
      [:span "Hello "]
      [:span.font-extrabold.text-transparent.bg-clip-text.bg-gradient-to-r.from-green-400.to-blue-500.font-mono "Tailwind!"]
      [:span " ✌️"]]
     [:div.text-lg.md:text-xl.lg:text-2xl.mt-8.text-gray-400 "Rapidly build modern websites without ever leaving your ClojureScript."]
     [:div.text-lg.md:text-xl.lg:text-2xl.mt-4.text-gray-400
      [:span "'( "]
      [a "https://tailwindcss.com/" "tailwindcss.com"]
      [:span " ... "]
      [a "https://clojurescript.org/" "clojurescript.org"]
      [:span " )"]]]]
   [:div.text-white.text-center.opacity-70.text-md
    [:p "A demo by " [a "https://clarice.bouwer.dev" "Clarice Bouwer"] " at curiousprogrammer.dev"]]
   [::div.text-white.text-center.opacity-50.text-sm.mt-5
    [:span [a "https://benborgers.com/posts/tailwind-gradient-text" "Text gradients"] " by benborgers.com"]]])


(r.dom/render [app] (js/document.getElementById "app"))

Run npm run develop.
Your app will still open at http://localhost:9500.
http://localhost:9500/cljs-out/dev/style.css will be generated.
You should see a Hello Tailwind! ✌️ banner with some text on the page.