Jekyll Assets

Jekyll assets is an asset pipeline using Sprockets 3 to build specifically for Jekyll. It utilizes new features of both Sprockets and Jekyll to try and achieve a clean and extensible assets platform.

Using Jekyll Assets with Jekyll

group :plugins do
  gem "jekyll-assets"
end

gems:
  - jekyll-assets

Configuration

The configuration file is the same as Jekyll's, which is _config.yml. Use the special key "assets":

assets:
  compress:
    css: false | true | default - development: false, production: true
    js: false | true | default - development: false, production: true
  autowrite: true
  cache: false | directory | default: .asset-cache
  cache_type: memory | filesystem | default: filesystem
  cdn: https://cdn.example.com
  skip_baseurl_with_cdn: false
  skip_prefix_with_cdn: false
  prefix: "/assets"
  digest: true
  assets:
    - "*.png"
    - "bundle.css"
  sources:
    - _assets/css
    - _assets/images
    - _assets/javascripts
    - _assets/stylesheets
    - _assets/fonts
    - _assets/img
    - _assets/js
  features:
    liquid: true | false | default: false
    integrity: true | false | default: false
    # This will add height and width attributes for an img tag.
    automatic_img_size: true | false | n(fixnum): 2,4,6,8 | default: true
    # This will add the digest path as an alt attribute for an img tag.
    automatic_img_alt : true | false | default: true

Liquid Processing with your Jekyll context

By default (whether features.liquid is true or false) we will process all files with the extension .liquid, so if you give us .scss.liquid we will parse the liquid and then we will parse the SCSS and finally output your .css file. When features.liquid is set to true, we will process ALL files through Liquid, regardless of whether they have the .liquid extension. Use this at your own risk. As it can lead to some bugs, some bad output, and even some ugly edge cases... especially with things like Handlebars.

Cache Folder

If you plan to change the cache folder, please make sure to add that folder to your exclude list in Jekyll, or you will generate over and over and over again, . folders are not ignored by default as of Jekyll 3.x, so you should take heed of ignoring your own folders.

Sources

The listed resources in the example are all defaults. It should be noted that we append your sources instead of replace our resources with yours. So if you add _assets/folder then we will append that to our sources and both will work. NOTE: if you use our _assets base folder container as a base folder for your Sprockets, we will not append our sources, we will only use that folder as the sole source (base folder.)

Digesting

• Disable digesting by default in development.
• Digest by default in production.

You can force digesting with digest: true in your _config.yml

Compression

• Requires sass and uglifier.
• Disable compression by default in development.
• Enable by default in production.

Generating CSS with Jekyll Assets

The following section shows how to get started generating CSS using Jekyll Assets. It applies to a newly generated Jekyll site, however this should helpanyone who has a Jekyll site. It should also be applicable for other types of assets.

Create the _assets/css directory

The default Jekyll Assets configuration expects to find all the assets in directories under _assets. Create a directory for the CSS:

mkdir -p _assets/css

Move the CSS files to the new _assets/css directory

Jekyll comes with a css directory containing a main.css file and then a _sass directory with a few Sass imports. Move all of that to the _assets/css directory.

mv css/main.css _assets/css
mv _sass/* _assets/css

Remove Jekyll front matter

Jekyll includes some empty front matter in main.css. Remove that as Sprockets will not understand it.

Update the layout

The layout will no longer be pointing to the correct main.css file. Jekyll Assets supplies liquid tags to generate the correct HTML for these assets. Open _includes/head.html and replace the <link> to the CSS with:

{% css main %}

Start up your local Jekyll server and if everything is correct, your site will be serving CSS via Sprockets. Read on for more information on how to customize your Jekyll Assets setup.

Addons

• Font Awesome gem "font-awesome-sass"

    @import 'font-awesome-sprockets'
    @import 'font-awesome'

• CSS Auto-Prefixing gem "autoprefixer-rails"

  assets:
    autoprefixer:
      browsers:
        - "last 2 versions"
        - "IE > 9"

• Bootstrap gem "bootstrap-sass"

    @import 'bootstrap-sprockets'
    @import 'bootstrap'

• ES6 gem "sprockets-es6"

• Image Magick gem "mini_magick"

• LESS gem "less"

Bower

Modify your .bowerrc file and add:

{
  "directory": "_assets/bower"
}

And then add _assets/bower to your sources list and Sprockets will do the the rest for you... you can even //= require bower_asset.js. We will even compress them for you per normal if Sprockets supports it and allows us to.

You do not need to modify your .bowerrc file, you can optionally just add it to your sources list and it will work that way too! As long as it's in your Jekyll folder.

Tags

• image, img
• javascript, js
• stylesheet, css, style
• asset, asset_source
• asset_path

Tag Example:

{% img src magick:2x alt:'This is my alt' %}
{% img src magick:2x alt:'This is my alt' sprockets:accept:image/gif %}

What do the colons mean? Proxies/Tags

• argument is a boolean HTML argument.
• key:value is an HTML key="value" if no proxy exists.
• proxy:key:value will set a proxy key with the given value.
• proxy:key is a boolean argument if the proxy and key exists.
• unknown:key:value will raise DoubleColonError, escape it.
• proxy:unknown:value will raise a UnknownProxyError.

Lets say we have sprockets proxies and sprockets allows you to proxy accept, if you send {% img src sprockets:accept:image/gif } then Sprockets find_asset will get { :accept => "image/gif" } but if you try to proxy "unknown" on sprockets we will raise a Proxy error. For more information then look at parser_spec.rb in the spec folder because it literally lays out the ground rules for our tags as a specification.

Current Proxies:

• sprockets:accept:<value>
• sprockets:write_to:<value>

Liquid Variables

We support liquid arguments for tag values (but not tag keys), and we also support Liquid pre-processing (with your Jekyll context) sass/less/css files you need do nothing special for the preprocessing an entire file, it's always done.

An example of using Liquid in your tags:

{% img '{{ image_path }}' %}
{% img '{{ image_path }}' proxy:key:'{{ value }}' %}
{% img {{\ image_path\ }} %}

An example of using Liquid in your SCSS:

.bg {
  background: url(asset_path("{{ site.background_image }}"));
}

You have full access to your entire Jekyll context from any liquid processing we do, so you can do whatever you like and be as dynamic as you like, including full loops and conditional Liquid based CSS since we pre-process your text files.

Getting a list of your assets and basic info from Liquid

We provide all your assets as a hash of Liquid Drops so you can get basic info that we wish you to have access to without having to prepare the class.

{{ assets["bundle.css"].content_type }} => "text/css"
{{ assets["images.jpg"].width  }} => 62
{{ assets["images.jpg"].height }} => 62

The current list of available accessors:

• logical_path
• content_type -> type
• filename
• basename
• width
• height
• digest_path

If you would like more, please feel free to add a pull request, at this time we will reject all pull requests that wish to add any digested paths as those are dynamically created when a proxy is ran so we can never predict it reliably unless we proxy and that would be a performance problem.

Dynamically loading assets

Using Liquid Drop assets, you can check whether an asset is present.

{% if assets[page.image] %}
  {% img '{{ page.image }}' %}
{% else %}
  {% img 'default.jpg' %}
{% endif %}

ERB Support

ERB Support is removed in favor of trying to get this included on Github Pages eventually (if I can.) Having ERB presents a security risk to Github because it would allow you to use Ruby in ways they don't want you to.

Filters

There is a full suite of filters, actually, any tag and any proxy can be a filter by way of filter arguments, take the following example:

{{ src | img : "magick:2x magick:quality:92" }}

Jekyll Assets Multi

Jekyll Assets has a special called jekyll_asset_multi which is meant to be used for things like the header, where it would be nice to be able to include multiple assets at once. You can use it like so:

{{ 'css:bundle.css "js:bundle.js async:true"' | jekyll_asset_multi }}

Hooks

• :env => [:init]

You can register and trigger hooks like so:

Jekyll::Assets::Hook.register :env, :init do
  # Your Work
end

Combining Multiple Scripts / Stylesheets

To minimize the number of HTTP requests, combine stylesheets and scripts into one file.

SCSS

Use the @import statement. Given a list of files in _assets/css:

• main.scss
• _responsive.scss
• _fonts.scss

...have this in your main.scss:

@import 'responsive';
@import 'fonts';
// ...

Include the main stylesheet in your HTML: {% css main %}.

JavaScript

Use //= require to import and bundle component scripts into one file. More from #241.

Given a list of files in _assets/js:

• main.js
• jquery.js

...have this in your main.js:

//= require jquery
// ...

Include the main script in your HTML: {% js main %}.

Sass Helpers

Our currently supported helpers are:

• asset_url
• asset_path
• image_path
• font_path
• image_url
• font_url

Image Magick Proxy arguments:

NOTE: You'll need the mini_magick gem installed for these to work To install mini_magick, add gem "mini_magick" to your Gemfile

See the MiniMagick docs to get an idea what <value> can be.

• magick:resize:<value>
• magick:format:<value>
• magick:quality:<value>
• magick:rotate:<value>
• magick:gravity:<value>
• magick:crop:<value>
• magick:flip:<value>
• magick:quadruple, magick:4x
• magick:one-third, magick:1/3
• magick:three-fourths, magick:3/4
• magick:two-fourths, magick:2/4
• magick:two-thirds, magick:2/3
• magick:one-fourth, magick:1/4
• magick:half, magick:1/2

Having trouble with our documentation?

If you do not understand something in our documentation please feel free to file a ticket and it will be explained and the documentation updated, however... if you have already figured out the problem please feel free to submit a pull request with clarification in the documentation and we'll happily work with you on updating it.