html-sketchapp-cli
Quickly generate Sketch libraries from HTML documents and living style guides, powered by html-sketchapp and Puppeteer.
Add some simple markup to your page, for example:
.........
Then run the html-sketchapp
command to generate JSON files in html-sketchapp's "Almost Sketch" format, ready to be imported into Sketch.
$ html-sketchapp --file sketch.html --out-dir dist/sketch
Install
Please note: html-sketchapp-cli requires Node.js and targets the latest "Active LTS" version. Older versions of Node are unsupported.
If you're in a hurry and just want to try it out, you can install html-sketchapp-cli globally, along with html-sketchapp's Sketch plugin:
$ npm install --global html-sketchapp-cli$ html-sketchapp install
However, when using html-sketchapp-cli in the context of a project, you should install it locally instead:
$ npm install --save-dev html-sketchapp-cli
Then, add some scripts to your package.json:
Once these scripts have been added, the following commands can be run within your project:
$ npm run html-sketchapp-install$ npm run html-sketchapp
Page Setup
Before using this tool, you'll need to add some hooks to your page so that everything can be selected, extracted and named correctly.
Annotate symbols with data-sketch-symbol
attributes. Note that forward slashes will create nested menu items within Sketch.
...
Annotate nested symbols with data-sketch-symbol-instance
attributes, where the attribute values reference existing symbols defined elsewhere in the document.
......... ... ... ...
Annotate all text styles with data-sketch-text
attributes.
...
Annotate all colors with data-sketch-color
attributes. Note that colors are unnamed in Sketch, so only the hex value needs to be provided.
...
For a real world example, check out SEEK Style Guide's sketch exports page and the corresponding source code.
CLI Usage
Importing from a local file
If your page is self-contained, you can import from a local HTML file.
$ html-sketchapp --file sketch.html --out-dir dist
Importing from a local static web server
If your page needs to be hosted on a static web server, you can provide a local directory to serve and a root relative URL to import from.
$ html-sketchapp --serve docs --url /sketch --out-dir dist
Importing from existing web server
If your page is hosted on an existing web server, you can provide an absolute URL.
$ html-sketchapp --url http://localhost:3000 --out-dir dist
Viewport sizes and responsive design
If you provide a set of one or more named viewports, every symbol and text style will be rendered for each screen size.
$ html-sketchapp --viewports.Desktop 1024x768 --viewports.Mobile 320x568 --file sketch.html --out-dir dist
If multiple screen sizes are provided, the viewport name will be being appended to all symbol and text style names. For example, Button/Primary
will be exported as Button/Primary/Desktop
and Button/Primary/Mobile
.
Optionally, you can set the pixel density for a given viewport by adding an @
followed by the desired scaling factor to the end of the viewport's resolution. For example, you can simulate a 1.5x and 2x display like so:
$ html-sketchapp --viewports.HigherDensity 1024x768@1.5 --viewports.Retina 1024x768@2 --file sketch.html --out-dir dist
If no scaling factor is provided, a default of 1
will be used.
Config file
All options can be provided via an html-sketchapp.config.js
file.
moduleexports = file: 'sketch.html' outDir: 'dist/sketch' viewports: Desktop: '1024x768' Mobile: '320x568' puppeteerArgs: '--no-sandbox --disable-setuid-sandbox' puppeteerExecutablePath: 'google-chrome-unstable';
You can provide an alternate config file path with the --config
option.
$ html-sketchapp --config example.config.js
Importing into Sketch
Once this command has successfully run, the following files will be generated in the output directory.
document.asketch.json
page.asketch.json
These need to be imported into Sketch via html-sketchapp's corresponding Sketch plugin. To ease the install process, you can run the following command.
$ html-sketchapp install
Then, open a new Sketch document and, from the menu, select Plugins > From *Almost* Sketch to Sketch
. In the file picker, select both document.asketch.json
and page.asketch.json
, and click Choose
.
Congratulations! You should now have your symbols, text styles and document colors available within Sketch! 💎🎉
Advanced Usage
Debug mode
If you need to see what Puppeteer is doing, you can provide the --debug
flag which will do the following things:
- Turn off headless mode
- Bring the browser window to the front
- Forward
console
calls to the terminal - Stop the browser from closing until you exit the CLI tool
For example:
$ html-sketchapp --url http://localhost:3000 --out-dir dist --debug
Puppeteer args
If you need to provide command line arguments to the browser instance via Puppeteer, you can provide the puppeteer-args
option.
Since Puppeteer uses Chromium internally, you can refer to the List of Chromium Command Line Switches for available options.
For example, if you'd like to disable the browser sandbox:
$ html-sketchapp --puppeteer-args="--no-sandbox --disable-setuid-sandbox" --file sketch.html --out-dir dist
Note: Because Puppeteer args are prefixed with hyphens, you must use an equals sign and quotes when providing this option via the command line (as seen above).
waitUntil
Puppeteer By default, Puppeteer is configured to consider the page loaded when there are no more than 2 network connections for at least 500ms (networkidle2
). This is so that html-sketchapp-cli can handle development environments with long-lived connections.
If the page you're requesting has 2 or fewer resources that stall for longer than 500ms and doesn't complete loading, you can switch back to networkidle0
via the puppeteer-wait-until
argument:
$ html-sketchapp --puppeteer-wait-
For the full list of available options for waitUntil
, view the Puppeteer page.goto()
API documentation.
Chromium executable
If you'd like to override the Chromium used by Puppeteer, you can provide a path to the executable with the puppeteer-executable-path
option.
$ html-sketchapp --puppeteer-executable-path google-chrome-unstable --file sketch.html --out-dir dist
Middleware
If you need to call out to lower-level html-sketchapp APIs, you can provide middleware functions that allow you to modify the underlying Sketch classes as they're generated.
It's recommended that you provide middleware via a config file as inline functions, for example:
moduleexports = { ... };
Alternatively, you can also provide middleware as standalone JavaScript files, configured via the command line:
$ html-sketchapp --symbol-layer-middleware symbol.layer.middleware.js
This assumes that your middleware is a JavaScript module that exports the function:
module { ... };
However, in order to keep the documentation streamlined, all examples will use the config file notation.
Symbol Layer Middleware
This middleware is executed for every layer within a symbol.
The typical use case for this is html-sketchapp's layer.setResizingConstraint
API which allows you to configure how a layer should behave when a symbol is resized.
moduleexports = { ... };
The following arguments are passed into your middleware function:
- layer: the html-sketchapp layer instance
- SVG: The SVG class for type checking of layer
- Text: The Text class for type checking of layer
- Rectangle: The Rectangle class for type checking of layer
- ShapeGroup: The ShapeGroup class for type checking of layer
- RESIZING_CONSTRAINTS: Object containing constants for the
setResizingConstraint
API
For example, when handling SVGs differently from other layers:
moduleexports = { const layer SVG RESIZING_CONSTRAINTS = args; layer; iflayer instanceof SVG layer; };
Symbol Middleware
This middleware is executed for every symbol within a document.
moduleexports = { ... };
The following arguments are passed into your middleware function:
- symbol: The current symbol master
- node: The source HTML node
- suffix: The symbol name suffix (e.g.
/Desktop
) - RESIZING_CONSTRAINTS: Object containing constants for the
setResizingConstraint
API
Symbol Instance Middleware
This middleware is executed for every symbol instance within a document.
moduleexports = { ... };
The following arguments are passed into your middleware function:
- symbolInstance: The current symbol instance
- symbolMaster: The symbol master that the symbol instance is referencing
- node: The source HTML node
- RESIZING_CONSTRAINTS: Object containing constants for the
setResizingConstraint
API
Contributing
Refer to CONTRIBUTING.md.
License
MIT.