TailwindCSS integration

We use TailwindCSS 3.0 with the JIT engine to style Avo, so on release we only pack the used Tailwind classes in our final css file. That's why, when you want to style your custom content (tools, resource tools, fields, or ejected partials), you won't have access to all of Tailwind's utility classes. It's a feature, not a bug. It's a performance optimization.

But there's an easy way to overcome that. You can add your own TailwindCSS process to watch for your the utility classes you use.

In versions prior to Avo 3, we maintained separate pre-compiled assets and provided a way to inject your Tailwind CSS assets into Avo's application. This often led to stylesheet conflicts. Now, we've improved integration by compiling a single stylesheet during the build process. If you want to add Tailwind configurations to Avo, your application will compile Avo's assets alongside your own in one build.

bin/rails generate avo:tailwindcss:install

That command will:

• install tailwindcss-rails gem if you haven't installed it yet;
• generate Avo's tailwind config.js config/avo/tailwind.config.js
• generate tailwind base, components and utilities under app/assets/stylesheets/avo/tailwind directory (workaround to import avo's base css after tailwind's base)
• create a custom app/assets/stylesheets/avo/tailwind.css file where you can further customize your Avo space;
• generate or enhance your Procfile.dev with the required compile yarn avo:tailwindcss --watch command, as per default tailwindcss-rails practices;
• enhance your package.json file with the build script. Make sure package.json is present, npm init will generate one if your project does'n have it.
• enhance your Rake file with the following code:

# When running `rake assets:precompile` this is the order of events:
# 1 - Task `avo:yarn_install`
# 2 - Task `avo:sym_link`
# 3 - Cmd  `yarn avo:tailwindcss`
# 4 - Task `assets:precompile`
Rake::Task["assets:precompile"].enhance(["avo:sym_link"])
Rake::Task["avo:sym_link"].enhance(["avo:yarn_install"])
Rake::Task["avo:sym_link"].enhance do
  `yarn avo:tailwindcss`
end

Now, instead of running bin/rails server, you can run that Procfile with bin/dev.

INFO

You mileage may vary when running these tasks depending with your setup. The gist is that you need to run yarn avo:tailwindcss on deploy0time to compile the css file and yarn avo:tailwindcss --watch to watch for changes in development.

Inside app/assets/stylesheets/avo you'll have a new tailwind.css file that's waiting for you to customize. The default config/avo/tailwind.config.js file should have the proper paths set up for purging and should be ready to go. Notice that it utilizes an preset that we manage, that preset is essential to build all avo's styles.

@import 'tailwindcss/base';
/* Have all of Avo's custom and plugins styles available. */
@import '../../../../tmp/avo/avo.base.css';
@import 'tailwindcss/components';
@import 'tailwindcss/utilities';

/*

@layer components {
  .btn-primary {
    @apply py-2 px-4 bg-blue-200;
  }
}

*/

Avo Task Dependencies

You must ensure that the avo:sym_link and avo:yarn_install tasks are executed before building the Avo assets.

These tasks are responsible for creating various symbolic links within the tmp/avo directory and installing necessary Node modules within Avo's path. These modules are essential for utilizing the Avo Tailwind preset. And the symbolic links are essentials for purging all Avo's tailwind classes.