External-svg-sprite-loader NPM

External SVG Sprite

A loader and plugin for webpack that converts all your SVGs into symbols and merges them into a SVG sprite.

Important: There is a breaking change when moving from v3 to v4. Check the release notes.

Requirements

You will need NodeJS v6+, npm v3+ and webpack 4.

To make it work in older browsers, like Internet Explorer, you will also need SVG for Everybody or svgxuse.

Installation

npm i external-svg-sprite-loader

yarn add external-svg-sprite-loader

Options

Loader options

name - relative path to the sprite file (default: img/sprite.svg). The [contenthash] placeholder is supported.
iconName - name for the icon symbol (default: icon-[name]-[hash:5]).
publicPath - custom public path to be used instead of webpack output.publicPath. This option might be useful when your webpack output.publicPath is set to a different scheme/host/port (e.g.: when you use a CDN). This is because currently the SVG sprite cannot be served from another domain (read more).
svgoOptions - custom options to be passed to svgo. If you set this option then make sure you add { removeViewBox: false } to the plugins otherwise this loader won't work.

Plugin options

emit - determines if the sprite is supposed to be emitted (default: true). Useful when generating server rendering bundles where you just need the SVG sprite URLs but not the sprite itself.
sprite - SVG sprite options (default: {startX: 0, startY: 0, deltaX: 0, deltaY: 0, iconHeight: 50, rowWidth: 1000}). StartX and StartY - beginning sprite position, DeltaX and DeltaY - space between icons. IconHeight - Icon height in the sprite (just for the comfort).

Usage

If you have the following webpack configuration:

// webpack.config.js

import path from 'path';

import SvgStorePlugin from 'external-svg-sprite-loader';

module.exports = {
    mode: 'development',
    module: {
        rules: [
            {
                loader: SvgStorePlugin.loader,
                test: /\.svg$/,
            },
        ],
    },
    output: {
        path: path.join(__dirname, 'public'),
        publicPath: '/',
    },
    plugins: [
        new SvgStorePlugin({
            sprite: {
                startX: 10,
                startY: 10,
                deltaX: 20,
                deltaY: 20,
                iconHeight: 20,
            },
        }),
    ],
};

You will be able to import your SVG files in your JavaScript files as shown below. The imported SVG will always correspond to a JavaScript object with keys symbol, view and viewBox:

The symbol url can be used on a <use> tag to display the icon;
The view url is supposed to be used in CSS;
The viewBox value is required by some browsers on the <svg> tag;
The title value can be used on the <svg> tag for accessibility.

The URLs will have the following format:

symbol: webpackConfig.output.publicPath/loader.name#loader.iconName
view: webpackConfig.output.publicPath/loader.name#view-loader.iconName

/*
 * {
 *  symbol: '/public/img/sprite.svg#icon-logo',
 *  view: '/public/img/sprite.svg#view-icon-logo',
 *  viewBox: '0 0 150 100',
 *  title: 'Logo'
 * }
 */
import logo from './images/logo.svg';

const Logo = () => (
   <svg viewBox={logo.viewBox} title={logo.title} role="img">
       <use xlinkHref={logo.symbol} />
   </svg>
);

In CSS files, you can import your SVG files as shown bellow (assuming you are using the MiniCssExtractPlugin). The imported value will be converted into the view url shown above.

.special-icon {
    /* the url will be replaced with the url to the sprite */
    background-image: url('./icons/special.svg') no-repeat 0;
}

When a SVG is added, removed or changed, the sprite will be re-generated and all files referencing it will be updated. When no [contenthash] is used in the name option, a cache-busting will be added to the URL so that the browser is forced to re-download the sprite.

Examples

You can find working examples in the examples folder. To test the React example under the examples/react folder run:

npm install
npm run start:dev

And then you can see the result in http://localhost:3000.

There's some additional commands that you may try:

npm run start:dev:hot to check if sprite updates work with Hot Module replacement.
npm run start:dev:no-hash to check if sprite updates work, even if the outputted file is the same.
npm run start:dev:hot-no-hash to check if sprite updates work with Hot Module replacement, even if the outputted file is the same.
npm run build:prd && npm run start:prd to test a production build.

Contributing

First of all, thank you for contributing, you are awesome.

Here are a few rules to follow in order to ease code reviews, and discussions before maintainers accept and merge your work:

Make sure your commit messages make sense (don't use fix tests, small improvement, fix 2, among others).
Before creating a pull request make sure of the following:
- your code is all documented properly;
- your code passes the ESLint rules;
- variable, function and class names are explanatory enough;
- code is written in ES2015.
When creating a pull request give it a name and description that are explanatory enough. In the description detail everything you are adding, do not assume we will understand it from the code.

Thank you!