PostCSS Sorting

PostCSS plugin to keep rules and at-rules content in order.

Lint and autofix stylesheet order with stylelint-order.

Features

• Sorts rules and at-rules content.
• Sorts properties.
• Sorts at-rules by different options.
• Groups properties, custom properties, dollar variables, nested rules, nested at-rules.
• Supports CSS, SCSS (using postcss-scss), CSS-in-JS (with @stylelint/postcss-css-in-js), HTML (with postcss-html), and most likely any other syntax added by other PostCSS plugins.

Installation

npm install --save-dev postcss postcss-sorting

Options

The plugin has no default options. Everything is disabled by default.

• order: Specify the order of content within declaration blocks.
• properties-order: Specify the order of properties within declaration blocks.
• unspecified-properties-position: Specify position for properties not specified in properties-order.
• throw-validate-errors: Throw config validation errors instead of showing and ignoring them. Defaults to false.

Caveats

Handling comments

Comments that are before node and on a separate line linked to that node. Shared-line comments are also linked to that node. Shared-line comments are comments which are located after a node and on the same line as a node.

a {
    top: 5px; /* shared-line comment belongs to `top` */
    /* comment belongs to `bottom` */
    /* comment belongs to `bottom` */
    bottom: 15px; /* shared-line comment belongs to `bottom` */
}

Ignored at-rules

Some at-rules, like control and function directives in Sass, are ignored. It means rules won't touch content inside these at-rules, as doing so could change or break functionality.

CSS-in-JS

Plugin will ignore rules, which have template literal interpolation, to avoid breaking the logic:

const Component = styled.div`
    /* The following properties WILL NOT be sorted, because interpolation is on properties level */
    z-index: 1;
    top: 1px;
    ${props => props.great && 'color: red'};
    position: absolute;
    display: block;

    div {
        /* The following properties WILL be sorted, because interpolation for property value only */
        z-index: 2;
        position: static;
        top: ${2 + 10}px;
        display: inline-block;
    }
`;

Usage

See PostCSS docs for more examples.

Command Line

Add postcss-cli and PostCSS Sorting to your project:

npm install postcss postcss-cli postcss-sorting --save-dev

Create a postcss.config.js with PostCSS Sorting configuration:

module.exports = {
    plugins: [
        'postcss-sorting': {
            order: [
                'custom-properties',
                'dollar-variables',
                'declarations',
                'at-rules',
                'rules',
            ],

            'properties-order': 'alphabetical',

            'unspecified-properties-position': 'bottom',
        },
    ],
};

Or, add the 'postcss-sorting' section to your existing postcss-cli configuration file.

Next execute:

npx postcss --no-map --replace your-css-file.css

For more information and options, please consult the postcss-cli docs.

Gulp

Add gulp-postcss and PostCSS Sorting to your build tool:

npm install postcss gulp-postcss postcss-sorting --save-dev

Enable PostCSS Sorting within your Gulpfile:

let gulp = require('gulp');
let postcss = require('gulp-postcss');
let sorting = require('postcss-sorting');

exports['sort-css'] = () => {
    return gulp
        .src('./css/src/*.css')
        .pipe(
            postcss([
                sorting({
                    /* options */
                }),
            ])
        )
        .pipe(gulp.dest('./css/src'));
};

Text editor

This plugin available as Sublime Text, Atom, VS Code, and Emacs plugin. Though, seems all these plugins are not maintained.

Related tools

stylelint and stylelint-order help lint stylesheets and let you know if stylesheet order is correct. Also, they could autofix stylesheets.

I recommend Prettier for formatting stylesheets.