@alma-oss/spirit-web

CSS implementation of Spirit Design System.

Install

yarn add @alma-oss/spirit-web

or

npm install --save @alma-oss/spirit-web

Usage

Quick Start with CSS

The pre-built Spirit CSS is a great choice for small one-off projects, prototypes and documentations.

Link the complete, vendor-prefixed and minimised CSS with default Spirit branding in your HTML template:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Inter:wght@400;600;700&display=swap" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="node_modules/@alma-oss/spirit-web/css/themes.min.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="node_modules/@alma-oss/spirit-web/css/foundation.min.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="node_modules/@alma-oss/spirit-web/css/components.min.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="node_modules/@alma-oss/spirit-web/css/helpers.min.css" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="node_modules/@alma-oss/spirit-web/css/utilities.min.css" />

👉 Alternatively, you can use CDN links when you don't want to install any npm packages.

Theming

To enable component independent, scoped changes of appearance, Spirit Design System uses themes. You can use any of the provided themes or create your own. Just include the theme CSS file before the foundation CSS file. Given the naming convention theme-<NAME OF THE THEME>, you can easily switch the theme at any point in your HTML:

<body class="text-primary bg-primary">
  <p>This paragraph uses the default light theme.</p>
  <section class="theme-light-on-brand bg-primary">
    <p class="text-primary">This paragraph uses the light theme on brand background.</p>
  </section>
</body>

Color Schemes

Spirit color schemes are semantic surfaces built from design tokens. They are not the same as the CSS color-scheme property or OS light/dark mode (prefers-color-scheme); they are Spirit’s own pattern for pairing foreground, background, and border colors on a subtree. In practice, this means you choose one surface class and Spirit keeps text, background, and border colors in sync for that part of the UI.

👉 See the Color Schemes guide for the full picture — pairing logic, all available schemes, the CSS custom properties they set, and how they relate to themes and dynamic colors.

How It Works

1. Surface class — Put color-scheme-on-<suffix> on a container (for example color-scheme-on-neutral-basic, color-scheme-on-emotion-success-basic, color-scheme-on-accent-01-subtle, or color-scheme-on-disabled). Each one sets local CSS custom properties for content, border, and background (with the Spirit CSS variable prefix), for example --spirit-local-color and --spirit-local-background-color.

   ℹ️ Every surface class also exposes both intensities of the background and content colors regardless of which variant you picked (--spirit-local-background-color-basic, --spirit-local-background-color-subtle, --spirit-local-color-basic, and --spirit-local-color-subtle), so a single surface class can color a component that combines them, for example a subtle surface carrying a basic-colored indicator. For color-scheme-on-disabled, the basic background is the disabled foreground — the color of a filled element sitting on a disabled surface — and its single content color serves as both content intensities.

2. Utilities or Components — On the same element (or an ancestor that already has a surface class), use utilities that read those locals: bg-color-scheme, text-color-scheme, and border-color-scheme so backgrounds, text, and borders stay on-palette without listing every token. See the dynamic color helper demo for examples. Or read the color scheme directly in the component CSS classes (for example Pill).

3. Tokens — Accent and emotion schemes follow the accent and emotion keys in spirit-design-tokens. New accents or emotions in tokens translate into additional color-scheme-on-* classes when themes are built. Fixed keys such as neutral-*, selected-*, and disabled are defined alongside them in the same generator.

Advanced Implementation in Product with Sass

❗ Important: Make sure you have the sass dependency installed in your project (sass is marked as optional peer dependency since you can use the pre-built distribution CSS). Also configure Sass load path for @tokens, @themes, and node_modules so all dependencies are resolved correctly by Sass.

Having the Sass load path configured, you can import just the components you need in your Sass stylesheet:

// my-product-styles.scss

// Spirit themes and foundation are mandatory
@use 'node_modules/@alma-oss/spirit-web/scss/themes';
@use 'node_modules/@alma-oss/spirit-web/scss/foundation';

// Spirit components can be hand-picked
@use 'node_modules/@alma-oss/spirit-web/scss/components/Button';

// Spirit helpers and utilities are optional
@use 'node_modules/@alma-oss/spirit-web/scss/helpers';
@use 'node_modules/@alma-oss/spirit-web/scss/utilities';

Usage of Mixins and Functions

The mixins and functions provided in this package are intended for internal use only. Their stability is not guaranteed under semantic versioning. If you choose to use them, consider copying them into your own codebase to avoid potential issues.

Custom Themes

Automatically: Using Figma and Supernova

The recommended way to create custom themes is using Figma and Supernova to define and export your design tokens, including their themed variants. Once you have your design tokens, you can use them in your Sass project.

To generate actual themes based on provided design tokens, just include our themes file in your Sass project:

@use 'node_modules/@alma-oss/spirit-web/scss/themes';

Manual Theme Creation

If you don't use Figma and Supernova or you need to theme just a small piece of your UI, you can create your own themes manually. Just define your theme variables so they match the structure outlined in the scss/themes/_color-tokens.scss file in the design tokens package.

For example:

@use '@tokens' as tokens;

:root,
.my-theme-light {
  --#{tokens.$token-prefix}color-text-primary: #007bff;
}

.my-theme-dark {
  --#{tokens.$token-prefix}color-text-primary: #beddff;
}

Prefixing CSS Class Names

You can add prefixes to CSS class names to better separate Spirit from other CSS in your project. The recommended way is using PostCSS with the postcss-prefix-selector plugin:

// postcss.config.js

const postcssPrefixSelector = require('postcss-prefix-selector');

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    postcssPrefixSelector({
      prefix: 'spirit-',
      transform(prefix, selector) {
        // Ignore interaction state classes controlled by JS: .is-* | .has-*
        const regex = /\.(?!is-|has-)/gi;
        return selector.replaceAll(regex, `.${prefix}`);
      },
    }),
  ],
};

JavaScript

Some components require JavaScript plugins for their full functionality. You can use individual modules or compiled bundle.

Individual or Compiled

Plugins can be included individually as an ECMAScript module (using import { <plugin> } from '@alma-oss/spirit-web', see Using Spirit Web as a module), or all at once using js/{cjs|esm|bundle}/spirit-web.js or the minified js/{cjs|esm|bundle}/spirit-web.min.js (do not include both), all files are UMD ready.

<script src="node_modules/@alma-oss/spirit-web/js/cjs/spirit-web.min.js" async></script>

If you use a bundler (Webpack, Rollup, …), you can use /js/*.js files which are ECMAScript modules.

Using Spirit Web as a Module in Browser

We provide a version of Spirit Web as ESM (spirit-web.esm.js and spirit-web.esm.min.js) which allows you to use Spirit Web as a module in your browser.

<script type="module">
  import { Header } from 'spirit-web.esm.min.js';

  Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.header')).forEach((headerNode) => new Header(headerNode));
</script>

Data Attributes

Nearly all Spirit-Web plugins can be enabled and configured through HTML alone with data attributes (our preferred way of using JavaScript functionality). Be sure to only use one set of data attributes on a single element (e.g., you cannot trigger a tooltip and modal from the same button.).

ℹ️ For turning off this functionality just do not set the data-spirit-toggle attribute and use the Programmatic API.

Selectors

Currently, to query DOM elements we use the native methods querySelector and querySelectorAll for performance reasons, so you have to use valid selectors. If you use special selectors, for example: collapse:Example be sure to escape them.

Events

Spirit-Web provides custom events for most plugins' unique actions. Generally, these come in an infinitive and past participle form - where the infinitive (ex. show) is triggered at the start of an event, and its past participle form (ex. shown) is triggered on the completion of an action.

All infinitive events provide preventDefault() functionality. This provides the ability to stop the execution of an action before it starts. Returning false from an event handler will also automatically call preventDefault().

var myModal = document.getElementById('my-modal');

myModal.addEventListener('show.modal', function (event) {
  if (!data) {
    return event.preventDefault(); // stops modal from being shown
  }
});

Programmatic API

var myModalEl = document.getElementById('my-modal');

var modal = new Modal(myModalEl); // initialized with defaults

If you’d like to get a particular plugin instance, each plugin exposes a getInstance method.

CSS Selectors in Constructors

You can also use a CSS selector as the first argument instead of a DOM element to initialize the plugin. Currently, the element for the plugin is found by the querySelector method since our plugins support a single element only.

var modal = new Modal('#myModal');
var dropdown = new Dropdown('[data-spirit-toggle="dropdown"]');

CDN

Spirit Design System is also available on CDN:

👉 Consider using a specific version instead of latest in production.

Units — rem

Spirit primarily uses rem for layout-related sizing — spacing, typography, radii, and shadows are expressed in rem relative to a 16 px root font size. Intentional px exceptions exist for values that must not scale with the root font size, such as border widths and visually-hidden utility techniques.

👉 See the units guide for full details, including the SCSS px-to-rem() function available internally and how the base font size relates to design tokens.

Rebranding

Design tokens enable quick and easy rebranding of Spirit Sass components and styles. Once you have created your own design tokens, just provide them to your Sass compiler and you are ready to go! Learn more in the spirit-design-tokens docs.

Development

Start local development server with yarn start to get started. You will get the live preview of all components and plugins in your browser. Just get dirty and change something and you will see the changes live.

The dev-stack is based on Vite.

Deprecations

This package uses the deprecation warnings for props, functions and components that will be removed or replaced in the next major release. Check your browser console to see if you are using any of the deprecated functionality.

👉 See a DEPRECATIONS file for a list of all deprecations.

Feature Flags

👀 See Feature Flags documentation for how to use them.

Examples

👀 See examples for a live demo.

License

See the LICENSE file for information.