glimmer-local-class-transform

This package provides a Glimmer template transform allowing the use of local-class as shorthand for importing and referencing a value from another module as a class name. Generally this is intended for use alongside CSS Modules, a technique for writing scoped CSS supported out of the box by most bundlers like Vite, Webpack (css-loader), and Parcel.

Setup

This transform is designed for use in v2 Ember apps and addons. If you're using a v1 app or the classic build pipeline, use ember-css-modules or ember-local-class instead.

v2 Ember Apps

Register the transform in your babel.config.cjs as part of the babel-plugin-ember-template-compilation transforms:

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    [
      'babel-plugin-ember-template-compilation',
      {
        // ...
        transforms: [
          'glimmer-local-class-transform',
          // ...other transforms
        ],
      },
    ],
    // ...other plugins
  ],
};

v2 Ember Addons

For v2 addons using Rollup, add the transform to your babel.publish.config.cjs:

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    '@embroider/addon-dev/template-colocation-plugin',
    [
      'babel-plugin-ember-template-compilation',
      {
        targetFormat: 'hbs',
        transforms: ['glimmer-local-class-transform'],
      },
    ],
    // ...other plugins
  ],
};

Make sure your Rollup babel plugin includes .hbs in its extensions so that standalone template files are processed:

babel({
  extensions: ['.hbs', '.js', '.gjs'],
  babelHelpers: 'bundled',
  configFile: './babel.publish.config.cjs',
}),

Config

To pass configuration options, use the array form instead of the string shorthand:

transforms: [
  ['glimmer-local-class-transform', { pathMapping: { '\\.gjs$': '.css' } }],
],

The following options are available:

pathMapping

A mapping where each key is a regular expression and each value is a replacement string, used to determine the CSS module path for a given template file. The first matching pattern is used.

Replacement strings may use $1, $2, etc. to reference capture groups from the regular expression.

Default: { '(\\.g?[tj]s|\\.hbs)+$': '.module.css' }

This default maps any .js, .ts, .gjs, .gts, or .hbs file to a .module.css file of the same name in the same directory.

Example — map .gjs and .hbs files to plain .css:

pathMapping: {
  '\\.(gjs|hbs)$': '.css',
}

runtimeModule

The module specifier from which runtime helpers (classNames, join) are imported.

Default: 'glimmer-local-class-transform/-runtime'

You generally don't need to change this unless you're providing your own runtime implementation.

Usage

Static class names

<div local-class="my-class"></div>

This resolves my-class from the co-located CSS module and applies the scoped class name.

Dynamic class names

<div local-class={{someProperty}}></div>

Mixed static and dynamic

<div local-class="foo {{bar}}"></div>

Combined with class

local-class and class can be used together on the same element. The resolved local classes are appended to the regular classes:

<div class="global-class" local-class="scoped-class"></div>

The local-class helper

For more control, you can use local-class as a helper directly in a class attribute. This also supports a from argument to reference a CSS module from a different path:

<div class={{local-class "foo"}}></div>
<div class="bar {{local-class "foo" from="@some/other-module"}}"></div>

How It Works

At compile time, the transform rewrites templates that use local-class:

1. It determines the CSS module path for the current template using pathMapping (e.g. my-component.gjs → ./my-component.module.css).
2. It imports the CSS module's default export (the class name mapping object) and the classNames runtime helper.
3. It replaces local-class usages with calls to classNames(styles, ...), which looks up each class name in the CSS module mapping and returns the corresponding scoped class names.

For example, <div local-class="foo"> is transformed into the equivalent of:

import styles from './my-component.module.css';
import { classNames } from 'glimmer-local-class-transform/-runtime';

<div class={{classNames styles "foo"}}></div>