pronunciation: imax

An application and library that transforms image files to data URIs (rfc2397) and embeds them into a single CSS file as background images.

Let's say you have a web-based frontend which embeds a lot of images (e.g. icons). This referencing produces HTTP requests for every single image. What if you would like to minimize it to just one request? That is something imacss can do for you.

Okay, enough words. Let's dive straight into a transformation example. If we assume that you have two SVGs, like github.svg and quitter.svg, imacss will generate this CSS code for you.

.imacss.imacss-github {
    background:url(data:image/svg+xml;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEBg...);
}

.imacss.imacss-quitter {
    background:url(data:image/svg+xml;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhADA...);
}

You can refer to this images by using the respective CSS classes:

<div class="imacss imacss-quitter">...</div>

imacss comes with a command-line interface which pipes the output to stdout by default (yeah, plain old text streams FTW!).

Install with npm globally.

npm install -g imacss

Embed all SVGs in a particular directory and all its subdirectories (will pipe the output to stdout).

$ imacss "~/projects/webapp/images/**/*.svg"

Embed all SVGs in a particular directory and transfer them to a CSS file which will be saved in the CWD.

$ imacss "~/projects/webapp/images/*.svg" images.svg.css

Embed all SVGs and PNGs in a particular directory and transfer them to a CSS file which will be saved in the CWD.

$ imacss "~/projects/webapp/images/*.{svg,png}" images.css

If you don't like the imacss selector namespace you are able to modify it as well.

$ imacss "~/projects/webapp/images/*.{svg,png}" images.css foobar

will produce this selector structure in the CSS file:

.foobar.foobar-github {...}

If you would like to use the imacss functionality within your application, there is an API for that.

Install with npm

npm install --save imacss

Transforms the image files from the specified glob and returns a stream with the CSS selectors that can be piped to somewhere else.

Arguments

glob

The path to the images which should be transformed. You can use any glob pattern you want.

namespace (optional; default=imacss)

The CSS selector namespace.

var imacss = require('imacss');

imacss
    .transform('/path/to/your/images/*.png')
    .on('error', function (err) {
        error('Transforming images failed: ' + err);
    })
    .pipe(process.stdout);

• Fixed typos in the README.

• Initial Release. Implemented the core functionality (CLI and API).

Copyright 2014, André König (andre.koenig@posteo.de)