DEV Community

Anthony Frehner
Anthony Frehner

Posted on • Edited on

1 1

Making CSS vars with SCSS vars

SASS treats CSS variables (also known as custom properties) in a special way, which means it's a little difficult to create CSS vars dynamically:

Sass parses custom property declarations differently than other property declarations. All tokens, including those that look like SassScript, are passed through to CSS as-is.

SASS docs

Which can cause problems, especially for my situation where I want to

  1. Keep the SASS variables around because they're used in a lot of existing code, but also
  2. Add CSS variables for new code

So here's how I've worked around this. It's not ideal, because it still duplicates the name of the SASS variable, but it works for my situation. 🤷

$primary-color: #30dbb4;

@mixin add-css-variable($name, $color) {
  --#{$name}: $color;
}

:root {
  // repeat as necessary for all your vars
  @include add-css-variable('primary-color', $primary-color);
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

You can test this out in the wonderful SassMeister playground

Do your career a big favor. Join DEV. (The website you're on right now)

It takes one minute, it's free, and is worth it for your career.

Get started

Community matters

Top comments (1)

Collapse
 
teetotum profile image
Martin • Edited

As far as I know string interpolation is processed by sass when creating the css variable and its value:

$my-color: #123456;

.foo {
    --my-color: #{$my-color};
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

will produce:

.foo {
  --my-color: #123456;
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

I tried it on sassmeister. Maybe I'm missing something?

AWS Security LIVE!

Tune in for AWS Security LIVE!

Join AWS Security LIVE! for expert insights and actionable tips to protect your organization and keep security teams prepared.

Learn More

👋 Kindness is contagious

Discover a treasure trove of wisdom within this insightful piece, highly respected in the nurturing DEV Community enviroment. Developers, whether novice or expert, are encouraged to participate and add to our shared knowledge basin.

A simple "thank you" can illuminate someone's day. Express your appreciation in the comments section!

On DEV, sharing ideas smoothens our journey and strengthens our community ties. Learn something useful? Offering a quick thanks to the author is deeply appreciated.

Okay