Sass-Inline-Svg

Inline url-encoded SVG with Sass. Optional variable string replacement included!

This is a Ruby Gem to be used with Ruby Sass, a version of this for node/npm-based environments with node-sass lives here: sass-inline-svg-utf8

gem install sass_inline_svg

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'sass_inline_svg'

Sass-inline-svg adds a inline_svg function you can use with Sass. It url-encodes the contents of the specified file and inlines it in your CSS (Url-encoded SVG is about 30% smaller than base64).

###Basic

.my-thing {
    background-image: inline_svg('my-file.svg');
}

When working with plain Sass, you'll have to use the full path to the svg file, when using Rails the path will be resolved by the Rails asset pipeline.

###Replacing Variable Strings

Replacing variable strings in SVG when inlining them with Sass makes sense e.g. if you need multiple variants of the same graphic with different fill colors.

With Sass-Inline-Svg you only need one source svg file with a variable string for fill:

…
<polygon fill="fillcolor" points="[…] "/>
…

The variants needed can be created during inlinig with Sass. Pass a Sass map of replacements as a second parameter:

.my-thing {
    background-image: inline_svg('my-file.svg', ( fillcolor: '#fff' ));
}

This will replace all occurences of fillcolor in your SVG with #fff:

…
<polygon fill="#fff" points="[…]"/>
…

Note: If you use $- or @-prefixed variable names in your SVG or if you want to replace an existing hex color, you'll have to quote the keys in your raplement Sass map:

.my-thing {
    background-image: inline_svg('my-file.svg', ( '$fillcolor': '#fff' ));
}

or

.my-thing {
    background-image: inline_svg('my-file.svg', ( '#000': '#fff' ));
}