CSS#

CSS is a first-class citizen in Rspack, and Rspack has several built-in features to support CSS bundling.

Enabling CSS support#

You can choose from the following options:

Native CSS support#

Rspack provides the experiment.css option, an experimental feature introduced in webpack 5 to enable native CSS support. Rspack has improved this feature and plans to enable it by default in Rspack 2.0.

If you create a new project based on Rspack, it is recommended to use this method.

export default {
  experiments: {
    css: true,
  },
};

After enabling experiment.css, Rspack will support the following three module types, which you can set on the rule using type:

• css: Used to handle normal CSS files.
• css/module: Used to handle CSS Modules.
• css/auto: Automatically determines whether a file is a normal CSS file or CSS Modules based on the file extension. Files ending with *.module.css are treated as CSS Modules.

For files ending in *.css, Rspack will treat them as type: 'css/auto' by default. You can also configure type: 'css/auto' to customize which files are treated as CSS files. For example, treat .less files as CSS files:

export default {
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.less$/,
        type: 'css/auto', // 👈
        use: ['less-loader'],
      },
    ],
  },
};

Using CssExtractRspackPlugin#

Rspack supports using css-loader and CssExtractRspackPlugin to generate standalone CSS files.

If you are migrating a webpack project that uses mini-css-extract-plugin, it is recommended to replace it with CssExtractRspackPlugin. Their functionality and options are basically the same.

• Install css-loader:

npm add css-loader -D

• Add configuration:

import { rspack } from '@rspack/core';

export default {
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.css$/i,
        use: [rspack.CssExtractRspackPlugin.loader, 'css-loader'],
        type: 'javascript/auto',
      },
    ],
  },
  plugins: [new rspack.CssExtractRspackPlugin({})],
};

Refer to the migration guide to learn how to migrate from webpack.

Using style-loader#

Rspack supports using css-loader and style-loader to inject CSS via <style> tags. This method does not generate standalone CSS files but inline the CSS content into JS files.

• Install css-loader and style-loader:

npm add css-loader style-loader -D

• Add configuration:

export default {
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.css$/i,
        use: ['style-loader', 'css-loader'],
        type: 'javascript/auto',
      },
    ],
  },
};

CSS Modules#

By default, Rspack treats files with a *.module.css extension as CSS Modules. You can import them into your JavaScript files, and then access each class defined in the CSS file as an export from the module.

.red {
  color: red;
}

You can use namespace import:

import * as styles from './index.module.css';
document.getElementById('element').className = styles.red;

You can also use named import:

import { red } from './index.module.css';
document.getElementById('element').className = red;

To enable default imports in Rspack, you need to set namedExports to false in your Rspack configuration file. This allows you, when using CSS Modules, to import the entire style module by default import, in addition to namespace imports and named imports:

export default {
  module: {
    parser: {
      'css/auto': {
        namedExports: false,
      },
    },
  },
};

Now you can use default import:

import styles from './index.module.css';
document.getElementById('element').className = styles.red;

For more on CSS Modules configuration, please refer to module.parser.css.

PostCSS#

Rspack supports postcss-loader, which you can configure like this:

npm add postcss postcss-loader -D

export default {
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.css$/,
        use: [
          {
            loader: 'postcss-loader',
            options: {
              postcssOptions: {
                // ...
              },
            },
          },
        ],
        // set to 'css/auto' if you want to support '*.module.css' as CSS Modules, otherwise set type to 'css'
        type: 'css/auto',
      },
    ],
  },
};

The above configuration will have all *.css files processed by postcss-loader. The output will be passed to Rspack for CSS post-processing.

Sass#

Rspack supports sass-loader, which you can configure like this:

npm add sass-embedded sass-loader -D

export default {
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.(sass|scss)$/,
        use: [
          {
            loader: 'sass-loader',
            options: {
              // using `modern-compiler` and `sass-embedded` together significantly improve build performance,
              // requires `sass-loader >= 14.2.1`
              api: 'modern-compiler',
              implementation: require.resolve('sass-embedded'),
            },
          },
        ],
        // set to 'css/auto' if you want to support '*.module.(scss|sass)' as CSS Modules, otherwise set type to 'css'
        type: 'css/auto',
      },
    ],
  },
};

The above configuration runs all *.sass and *.scss files through the sass-loader and passes the resulting results to Rspack for CSS post-processing.

Less#

Rspack supports less-loader, which you can configure like this:

npm add less less-loader -D

export default {
  module: {
    rules: [
      {
        test: /\.less$/,
        use: [
          {
            loader: 'less-loader',
            options: {
              // ...
            },
          },
        ],
        // set to 'css/auto' if you want to support '*.module.less' as CSS Modules, otherwise set type to 'css'
        type: 'css/auto',
      },
    ],
  },
};

The above configuration runs all *.less files through the less-loader and passes the generated results to Rspack for CSS post-processing.

Tailwind CSS#

Tailwind CSS is a CSS framework and design system based on utility class, which can quickly add common styles to components, and support flexible extension of theme styles.

Tailwind CSS documentation provides integration guides for Rspack, please refer to:

• Install Tailwind CSS v4 with Rspack
• Install Tailwind CSS v3 with Rspack