How to use Tailwind CSS with Vite | Easy Explained | Vite + Tailwind

If you’re a web developer, you’ve probably heard of Tailwind CSS and Vite. These are two popular tools in the web development community. Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework that makes it easy to build custom designs without writing custom CSS, while Vite is a next-generation frontend tooling that is blazing fast.

Getting Started

To use Tailwind CSS with Vite, you first need to create a new Vite project. You can do this by running the following command in your terminal:


npx create-vite@latest my-vite-project


Once your Vite project is created, navigate to the project directory and install Tailwind CSS using npm or yarn:


npm install tailwindcss


or


yarn add tailwindcss


Configuring Tailwind CSS

Next, you need to create a configuration file for Tailwind CSS. You can do this by running the following command in your terminal:


npx tailwindcss init -p


This will create a tailwind.config.js file in the root of your project. Open this file and customize the configuration as per your requirements.

Using Tailwind CSS in Vite

Now that you have Tailwind CSS installed and configured, you can start using it in your Vite project. Open your main CSS file (e.g., src/style.css) and import Tailwind’s base styles at the top:


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


You can now start using Tailwind’s utility classes in your HTML and Vue components.

Building for Production

When you’re ready to build your project for production, you can run the following command in your terminal:


npm run build


This will generate a production-ready build of your project with all the Tailwind CSS styles optimized and purged for minimal file size.

Conclusion

Using Tailwind CSS with Vite is a straightforward process that can significantly improve your web development workflow. By leveraging the power of Tailwind’s utility classes and Vite’s fast build times, you can build modern and efficient web applications with ease.