In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how to integrate TailwindCSS to your Angular project the EZ EZ way.

This tutorial is for people that want to work with TailwindCSS in their Angular application with the new released version 11.2.0 (comes with native support for TailwindCSS now 😉) or with with older versions.

YOU CAN SKIP THE 💩 AND GO STRAIGHT TO THE INSTALLATION STEPS

Content

What is TailwindCSS?
How does TailwindCSS work?
Advantages of TailwindCSS
Disadvantages of TailwindCSS
Installing TailwindCSS (Angular version < 11.2.0)
Installing TailwindCSS (Angular version >= 11.2.0)
Making sure TailwindCSS is working in Angular
Purge Tailwind in Angular prod build

What is TailwindCSS?

"A utility-first CSS framework packed with classes like flex, pt-4, text-center and rotate-90 that can be composed to build any design, directly in your markup." - Tailwind team

How does TailwindCSS work?

TailwindCSS is different than other CSS frameworks like Bootstrap. It comes with a set of utility classes(CSS classes). This will allow you to create and combine the classes to give your UI the aspect that you want. TailwindCSS allows you to customize their styles in a very easy way to create your own design systems.

Advantages of TailwindCSS

You will spend more time in your business logic rather than your CSS
Pre-made utility classes ready to use
You add their classes like you would with any CSS class
Light weight in production
Mobile first
Expandable and customizable
Use it the "old school" way by applying their styles into your CSS classes
Extensions for your IDE
Well documented
Well supported by different tools like Vue and React
You can always inspect the TailwindCSS classes in a website and see the actual CSS code :)
The naming convention for the classes make sense e.g space-y-4 it will add a vertical(Y-AXIS) space of 4 pixels between your HTML elements.

Disadvantages of TailwindCSS

I don't recommend it if you are new to CSS, not because is hard but because it makes you lazier. You won't be writing any CSS sometimes just adding classes
Can make your HTML very dirty. If you add a lot of classes to you HTML element it can get ugly, quick! A solution for this is to create components using the classes from TailwindCSS that way you clean up your HTML

Installing TailwindCSS (Angular version < 11.2.0)

If your Angular version is greater than or equal to 11.2.0, you can skip this section

The easiest way to use TailwindCSS in your Angular app with version less than 11.2.0 in my personal opinion is by using the @ngneat/tailwind npm package. I had a great experience with it (plug and play).

First step is to run the following schematic in your Angular project: ng add @ngneat/tailwind
When asked if you want to enable dark mode select class
When asked if you would you like to use Tailwind directives & functions in component styles? select Yes
When asked what TailwindCSS plugins you want to enable, select forms and typography or all of them. That's up to you.

There's 4 parts we need to focus on after we have installed TailwindCSS in our Angular app.

-A new file created tailwind.config.js it should look like this
-A new file created webpack.config.js it should look like this
-The new dark class added to your index.html body element

<body class="dark">
  <app-root></app-root>
</body>

-Some imports added to your styles.scss file

@import 'tailwindcss/base';
@import 'tailwindcss/components';
@import 'tailwindcss/utilities';

Note: To turn on purge in your production build follow this tiny tweet

OPTIONAL

Take a look to this amazing video created by my friend Beeman. It shows you how use TailwindCSS in Angular in 3 MINUTES!

Installing TailwindCSS (Angular version >= 11.2.0)

If your Angular version is less than 11.2.0, you can skip this section and look at the instructions above for installation. If you already performed the previous steps, go to Testing TailwindCSS in Angular section below.

Install with npm install -D tailwindcss
Install TailwindCSS plugins(Optional):

npm i @tailwindcss/typography
npm i @tailwindcss/forms

Some people are running older versions of the CLI or the @angular-devkit/build-angular. Make sure your package.json looks AT LEAST with version 11.2.0this or have a more recent versions (if available)

Create a TailwindCSS configuration file in the workspace or project root. Name that configuration file tailwind.config.js

It should look like this:

module.exports = {
    prefix: '',
    purge: {
      content: [
        './src/**/*.{html,ts}',
      ]
    },
    darkMode: 'class', // or 'media' or 'class'
    theme: {
      extend: {},
    },
    variants: {
      extend: {},
    },
    plugins: [require('@tailwindcss/forms'),require('@tailwindcss/typography')],
};

In your styles.scss file add the following TailwindCSS imports

@import 'tailwindcss/base';
@import 'tailwindcss/components';
@import 'tailwindcss/utilities';

if you are using CSS not SCSS, your file should look like this:

@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;

Making sure TailwindCSS is working in Angular

Go to any of you components and write the following:

<button
  class="py-2 px-4 border border-transparent shadow-sm text-sm font-medium rounded-md text-white bg-red-400">Hello</button>

Now run ng serve, you should see the following button

If you don't want to have that many classes in your HTML, you can clean it up by putting the TailwindCSS classes in your CSS/SCSS files.

.btn {
    @apply py-2 px-4 border border-transparent shadow-sm text-sm font-medium rounded-md text-white bg-red-400
}

** Notice I'm using the @apply **

<button class="btn">Hello</button>

Github Repo of project running Angular 11.2.0 and Tailwind

How to purge TailwindCSS in Production

If we don't purge, our CSS can be very heavy due to all the CSS classes TailwindCSS adds for you. If you purge, all the unused classes will be removed.

The way I figured to do purging in Angular 11.2.0 are the following ways:

A) This is my preferred way. Add this to your building SCRIPT NODE_ENV=production ng build --prod
and your tailwind.config.js file should look like this.

...
purge: {
      enabled: process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production',
      content: [
        './src/**/*.{html,ts}',
      ]
    },
...

B) In your tailwind.config.js file you can set the enabled property inside of the purge property to true

....
prefix: '',
    purge: {
      enabled: true,
      content: [
        './src/**/*.{html,ts}',
      ]
    },
....

Then you can run ng build --prod and you will see your bundle since getting smaller.

Before purging

After purging

Special thanks to:

Contributors of the ngneat/tailwind package:
Chau Tran
Beeman

and the other contributors of this awesome package.

Special thanks to Kevin, GDE from Angular Taiwan for helping me debug my issues.
Kevin

Special thanks to Vlad, he showed me the purge trick :)
Vlad Tansky

Setup TailwindCSS in Angular the easy way