pyScss syntax

Supported Sass features

pyScss is mostly compatible with Sass 3.2 and has partial support for the upcoming Sass 3.3. The canonical syntax reference is in the Sass documentation: http://sass-lang.com/docs/yardoc/file.SASS_REFERENCE.html

Both syntaxes

SCSS (CSS3 superset) is the primary syntax, but there’s experimental support for the SASS (YAML-like) syntax.

Built-in functions

All of the Sass 3.2 functions described in the Sass documentation are supported.

Rule nesting

Rule/selector nesting and the & parent-reference selector are both supported.

Example:

.selector {
    a {
        display: block;
    }
    strong {
        color: blue;
    }
}

Produces:

.selector a {
    display: block;
}
.selector strong {
    color: blue;
}

Variables, data types

Variables are supported. All of the Sass data types—strings, numbers, booleans, colors, lists, maps, and null—are supported.

Example:

$main-color: #ce4dd6;
$style: solid;
$side: bottom;
#navbar {
    border-#{$side}: {
        color: $main-color;
        style: $style;
    }
}

Produces:

#navbar {
    border-bottom-color: #ce4dd6;
    border-bottom-style: solid;
}

Functions and mixins

@function, @mixin, and @include (optionally with @content) are supported.

Named arguments (foo($name: value)) and slurpy arguments (foo($args...)) are also supported.

Example:

@mixin rounded($side, $radius: 10px) {
    border-#{$side}-radius: $radius;
    -moz-border-radius-#{$side}: $radius;
    -webkit-border-#{$side}-radius: $radius;
}
#navbar li { @include rounded(top); }
#footer { @include rounded(top, 5px); }
#sidebar { @include rounded(left, 8px); }

Produces:

#navbar li {
    border-top-radius: 10px;
    -moz-border-radius-top: 10px;
    -webkit-border-top-radius: 10px;
}
#footer {
    border-top-radius: 5px;
    -moz-border-radius-top: 5px;
    -webkit-border-top-radius: 5px;
}
#sidebar {
    border-left-radius: 8px;
    -moz-border-radius-left: 8px;
    -webkit-border-left-radius: 8px;
}

Rule extension

@extend is supported, though some particularly thorny edge cases may not produce output identical to the reference compiler.

Example:

.error {
    border: 1px #f00;
    background-color: #fdd;
}
.error.intrusion {
    background-image: url("/image/hacked.png");
}
.seriousError {
    @extend .error;
    border-width: 3px;
}

Produces:

.error,
.seriousError {
    border: 1px red;
    background-color: #fdd;
}
.error.intrusion,
.seriousError.intrusion {
    background-image: url("/image/hacked.png");
}
.seriousError {
    border-width: 3px;
}

Conditions

@if, @else if, and @else are supported.

Loops

Both types of iteration are supported:

@for $n from 1 through 9 {
    .span-#{$n} { width: $n * 10%; }
}

@each $color in red, blue, yellow {
    .button-#{$color} {
        background-color: $color;
    }
}

Additionally, the unpacking-iteration syntax in Sass trunk is supposed; see Maps.

Maps

pyScss has experimental support for maps, a data type recently added to Sass trunk. Maps are defined with colons inside parentheses:

$colors: (
    text: black,
    background: white
);

Keys may be any Sass expression, not just strings.

Maps are manipulated with a handful of map functions:

a {
    color: map-get($colors, text);
    background-color: map-get($colors, background);
}

A map is semantically equivalent to a list of 2-lists, stored in the order they appeared when the map was defined. Any list operation will work on a map:

div {
    // I don't know why you'd do this  :)
    margin: nth($colors, 1);  // => text, black
}

Maps may be iterated over with @each, of course, but each item will be a somewhat clumsy 2-list. Instead, you can give multiple variables to do an unpacking iteration:

@each $key, $value in $colors {
    // I don't know why you'd do this either!
    [data-style=$key] {
        color: $value;
    }
}

This syntax works on any list-of-lists.

Everything is a list

Another change borrowed from Sass trunk: any scalar type (string, number, boolean, etc.) will also act as a list of one element when used where a list is expected. This is most useful when writing Python extensions, but may also save you from checking type-of in a complex API.

Compass support

An arbitrary cross-section of Compass 0.11 is supported:

  • Math functions: sin, cos, tan, round, ceil, floor, pi, e
  • Images: image-url, image-width, image-height...
  • Embedded (inline) images: inline-image

Note

Currently, Compass support is provided by default, which has led to some surprising behavior since parts of Compass conflict with parts of CSS3. In the future, Compass will become an extension like it is for Ruby, and you will have to opt in.

Sprites

Example:

$icons: sprite-map("sociable/*.png"); // contains sociable/facebook.png among others.
div {
    background: $icons;
}
@each $icon in sprites($icons) {
    div .#{$icon} {
        width: image-width(sprite-file($icons, $icon));
        height: image-height(sprite-file($icons, $icon));
        background-position: sprite-position($icons, $icon);
    }
}

...generates a new sprite file and produces something like:

div {
    background: url("/static/assets/u8Y7yEQL0UffAVw5rX7yhw.png?_=1298240989") 0px 0px no-repeat;
}
div .facebook {
    width: 32px;
    height: 32px;
    background-position: 0px 0px;
}
div .twitter {
    width: 32px;
    height: 32px;
    background-position: 0px -32px;
}
...

pyScss-specific extensions

pyScss supports some constructs that upstream Sass does not, for various reasons. Listed here are “blessed” features in no danger of being removed, though you should avoid them if you’re at all interested in working with the reference compiler.

There are also some deviations that only exist for backwards compatibility; you should not rely on them, they will start spewing warnings at some point in the future, and eventually they will disappear. They are listed separately in Deprecated features.

@option

Compiler options may be toggled at runtime with @option. At the moment the only supported option is compress, to control whether the output is compressed:

@option compress: true;

Multiplying strings by numbers

Much like in Python, this works:

content: "foo" * 3;  // => "foofoofoo"

This is a runtime error in the reference compiler.

Deprecated features

Brackets to delimit expressions

In an expression, square brackets are equivalent to parentheses:

margin-top: [1px + 2px] * 3;  // => 9px

This is a holdover from xCSS and will be removed in the future.

extends

There’s an alternative syntax for @extend:

a extends b {
    ...
}

This is identical to:

a {
    @extend b;
    ...
}

This is a holdover from xCSS and will be removed in the future.

self selector

self is an alias for &:

a {
    self:hover {
        text-decoration: underline;
    }
}

This is a holdover from xCSS and will be removed in the future.

@variables block

Variables may be declared in a dedicated block:

@variables {
    $color: red;
}

@vars is an alias for @variables.

This is a holdover from xCSS and will be removed in the future.

+foo to include a mixin

This:

div {
    +border-radius 3px;
}

Is equivalent to this:

div {
    @include border-radius(3px);
}

This is the same as the Sass syntax, but causes some parsing ambiguity, since +foo with a block could be either a nested CSS block with a sibling selector or a mixin call. Its future is uncertain, but you should probably avoid using it in SCSS files.

Soft errors

pyScss is much more liberal in what it accepts than the reference compiler; for example, rules at the top level and missing closing braces are accepted without complaint, and attempting to use a non-existent mixin only results in a warning.

pyScss 2.0 is likely to be much stricter; don’t rely on any particular abuse of syntax to work in the future.

Operations on lists

Binary operations with a list on the left-hand side are performed element-wise:

p {
margin: (1em 0 3em) * 0.5; // => 0.5em 0 1.5em

}

Given that future versions of the reference compiler are likely to introduce built-in list operations, the future of this feature is unclear.

Mixin “injection”

A mixin defined like this:

@mixin foo(...) {
// ...

}

will accept any keyword arguments, which will be available as variables within the mixin.

This behavior exists for historical reasons and due to the lack of a **kwargs equivalent within Sass. Its usage makes mixin behavior harder to understand and you should not use it.

Unsupported Sass features

Some Sass features are not supported or have some gaps. Each of these may be considered a bug.

CLI

pyScss’s command-line arguments are not entirely compatible with those of the reference compiler.

Sass 3.3

The following Sass 3.3 improvements are not yet implemented, but are planned for the near future:

  • Use of & in expressions.
  • @at-root
  • Source map support.
  • Using ... multiple times in a function call, or passing a map of arguments with .... Likewise, keywords() is not implemented.
  • unique-id(), call(), and the various *-exists() functions are not implemented.