Importing Sass through npm

Question

Currently in our Sass files we have something like the following:

@import "../../node_modules/some-module/sass/app"; 

This is bad, because we're not actually sure of the path: it could be ../node_modules, it could be ../../../../../node_modules, because of how npm installs stuff.

Is there a way in Sass that we can search up until we find node_modules? Or even a proper way of including Sass through npm?

Answer 1

If you are looking for a handy answer in 2017 and are using Webpack, this was the easiest I found.

Suppose your module path is like:

node_modules/some-module/sass/app 

Then in your main scss file you can use:

@import "~some-module/sass/app"; 

Tilde operator shall resolve any import as a module.

Answer 2

As Oncle Tom mentioned, the new version of Sass has this new importer option, where every "import" you do on your Sass file will go first through this method. That means that you can then modify the actual url of this method.

I've used require.resolve to locate the actual module entry file.
Have a look at my gulp task and see if it helps you:

'use strict';  var path       = require('path'),     gulp       = require('gulp'),     sass       = require('gulp-sass');  var aliases = {};  /**  * Will look for .scss|sass files inside the node_modules folder  */ function npmModule(url, file, done) {   // check if the path was already found and cached   if(aliases[url]) {     return done({ file:aliases[url] });   }    // look for modules installed through npm   try {     var newPath = path.relative('./css', require.resolve(url));     aliases[url] = newPath; // cache this request     return done({ file:newPath });   } catch(e) {     // if your module could not be found, just return the original url     aliases[url] = url;     return done({ file:url });   } }  gulp.task("style", function() {   return gulp.src('./css/app.scss')     .pipe(sass({ importer:npmModule }))     .pipe(gulp.dest('./css')); }); 

Now let's say you installed inuit-normalize using node. You can simply "require" it on your Sass file:

@import "inuit-normalize"; 

I hope that helps you and others. Because adding relative paths is always a pain in the ass :)