Importing Multiple Partials into Stylesheets

Tutorial 2 of 5

Introduction

Welcome to this tutorial on importing multiple partials into stylesheets. The goal of this tutorial is to teach you how to use the @import directive to combine styles from different partials.

By the end of this tutorial, you will be able to:
- Understand what partials are and how they work
- Use the @import directive to import multiple partials into a main stylesheet

Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of CSS is required.

Step-by-Step Guide

Understanding Partials

Partials are smaller Sass files that you can import into other Sass files. This allows you to modularize your CSS and help keep things easier to maintain. A partial is simply a Sass file named with a leading underscore. For example, _buttons.scss.

Using @import

The @import directive takes the name of a Sass or CSS file to include the contents of that file right at the location of the @import. This is a powerful way to combine files and keep your stylesheets modular.

@import 'buttons';
@import 'colors';

In the example above, the CSS in _buttons.scss and _colors.scss will be imported.

Code Examples

Suppose we have two partials: _colors.scss and _buttons.scss.

_colors.scss:

/* Define some color variables */
$primary-color: #333;
$secondary-color: #CCC;

_buttons.scss:

/* Define some button styles */
.btn {
  background-color: $primary-color;
  color: $secondary-color;
}

In your main.scss file, import the two partials:

main.scss:

/* Import the partials */
@import 'colors';
@import 'buttons';

The output CSS will be:

.btn {
  background-color: #333;
  color: #CCC;
}

Summary

In this tutorial, you've learned how to import multiple partials into a main stylesheet using the @import directive. This helps you modularize your CSS and keep things easier to maintain.

Your next steps could be learning more about Sass features like mixins and functions. You might also want to explore other CSS preprocessors like Less.

Practice Exercises

  1. Create three partials: _colors.scss, _buttons.scss, and _typography.scss. Import them into a main stylesheet.

  2. Refactor the _buttons.scss partial from the code example to include a btn-large class that has a larger font-size and padding.

  3. Create a _variables.scss partial that defines some width and height variables. Use these variables in another partial.

Remember to import all your partials into a main stylesheet. Practice will help you get comfortable with the process and understand the concept better.