Blazor and Tailwind CSS

Blazor, a powerful framework for building interactive client-side web UI with .NET, and Tailwind CSS, a highly customizable, low-level CSS framework, come together to provide a streamlined development experience.

This guide is designed for developers who are interested in exploring the synergy between Blazor and Tailwind CSS. It provides insights and practical steps to integrate these technologies effectively, enhancing both the aesthetics and functionality of your web applications.

Quick setup

• For a quick and easy way to experiment with Tailwind CSS in your Blazor project, simply incorporate Tailwind's Play CDN link into your index.html (or App.razor) file. This approach offers a straightforward method to start using Tailwind without the need for extensive setup. Your integration would look something like this:

   <script src="https://cdn.tailwindcss.com"></script>

  • Then just add the Tailwind classes to your HTML elements. For example:

  <div class="bg-blue-500 text-white p-4">
    This is a Tailwind styled div.
  </div>

  • This approach is not suitable for production use. For a more robust solution, see the next section.

• You can use tailwind cli. It enables you to run tailwind without npm.

  • On Windows you can obtain it by winget install -e --id TailwindLabs.TailwindCSS

• Add the following to your app.css file.

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

• Add a tailwind.config.js file to your project root. You can run tailwindcss init command in your terminal to create it.

• Add razor files to the content array in tailwind.config.js:

module.exports = {
  content:
      [
          './**/*.razor',//it will scan all razor files in the project and will find all the tailwind classes that you use
          './wwwroot/index.html' //not necessary if you use Blazor 8 Web App (not just standalone wasm app)
      ],
}

• Run the tailwindcss -i .\wwwroot\app.css -o .\wwwroot\app.min.css -w where the tailwind.config.js resides.
  • (Note that app.css is directly in the wwwroot folder)
  • This will generate app.min.css file in the wwwroot folder. app.min.css will contain all the classes that you use in your razor files.
• Change the path in index.html (or App.razor if you don't use standalone wasm app) to use app.min.css instead of app.css. It will look like this:

  <link href="app.min.css" rel="stylesheet" />

  • app.css is just for tailwind, app.min.css is for your app.
• Don't include app.min.css in git, but rather use build action. Check the pipeline to see how to download and use tailwind cli in the pipeline.

Related repositories

• dotnet-tailwind. Basic tool to bootstrap Tailwind in .NET Blazor projects.
• Blazorise. Blazorise is a component library built on top of Blazor with support fresh support for Tailwind CSS. It uses Flowbite components.
• BlazorStatic is a static site generator for Blazor. It uses Tailwind as the default CSS framework.
• DragAndDropList. Minimal implementation of drag & drop list in Blazor WebAssembly using Tailwind CSS.
• ❓Your repository here? Create an issue or PR!

Notes and tips

• ❓(Let me know yours!)

• Tailwind Blazor loader (see index.html):

  

• Tailwind playground is a great place to create prototypes. It is fast (you see changes instantly), vscode based and allows you to save your work.

• tailwind build process is rather quick, but sometimes leaves a mess inside the CSS file. For example, it will keep all the classes that were previously used (but are not used anymore)

  • You can delete the app.min.css file at any time (it will generate it again).
  • You should use minified version in production: ./tw -i input.css -o output.css --minify

• Tailwind and bootstrap have some clashing CSS classes (px-2 for example). If you need to keep both (I have to, because I am using a component library, which is based on bootstrap) you can use prefix for tailwind classes.

• There is currently no tailwind package in the chocolatey package manager. You can vote for it here.

• There is this a good extension for vscode, which brings pleasant experience from tailwind playground to your desktop. Just open root folder of your project (where the tailwind.config.js is).

• (not an issue anymore) I had a bad experience with dotnet hot reload when CSS files are regenerated. It does weird things, like not updating (even after Ctrl+R), serving older versions, etc.. You can turn off hot reloading with: dotnet watch --project . --no-hot-reload. I am in the progress of finding a better solution. Anybody knows it already?

• If you want to build your CSS file every time you reload your project you can add the following into your .csproj file. You do have to change the command to set the input and output directories and the executable name and it should work. However it doesn't trigger on hot reloads so you have to reload manually.

  <Target Name="UpdateTailwindCSS" BeforeTargets="Compile">
    <Exec Command="./tailwindcss .\wwwroot\css\app.css -o .\wwwroot\css\app.min.css" ContinueOnError="true">
      <Output TaskParameter="ExitCode" PropertyName="ErrorCode"/>
    </Exec>
    <Error Condition="'$(ErrorCode)' != '0'" Text="Error building CSS file"/>
  </Target>

• If you're developing on machines with different OSs, you can add the build script down below into your .csproj file, and have different scripts run based on your operating system. Make sure you modify the paths to actually work. I recommend trying them out in your terminal first. Also make sure you download both the Linux and Windows executable if you're jumping between systems.

  <Target Name="UpdateTailwindCSS" BeforeTargets="Compile">
    <!-- The code below runs only on Linux operating systems -->
    <Exec Command="./tailwindcss -i Styles/app.css -o wwwroot/css/app.css" Condition="$([MSBuild]::IsOSPlatform('Linux'))" ContinueOnError="true">
      <Output TaskParameter="ExitCode" PropertyName="ErrorCode"/>
    </Exec>
  
    <!-- The code below runs only on Windows operating systems -->
    <Exec Command=".\tailwindcss.exe -i Styles\app.css -o wwwroot\css\app.css" Condition="$([MSBuild]::IsOSPlatform('Windows'))" ContinueOnError="true">
      <Output TaskParameter="ExitCode" PropertyName="ErrorCode"/>
    </Exec>
  
    <Error Condition="'$(ErrorCode)' != '0'" Text="Error building CSS"/>
  </Target>