Award-Winning Fjords Thomas Reynolds

Sass @extend Introduction

Sass (and SCSS) version 3 added support for the @extend directive which provides a means of class inheritance and combats the duplication of CSS which Sass mixins create. The earlier features of Sass were basically macros. They grabbed a piece of CSS from either a mixin definition or an external file and inserted that CSS into the output. @extend actually manipulates the selectors and uses CSS's own cascading inheritance system simplify code and avoid duplication. Let's look at some simple examples.

Multiple Sidebars and Fighting Class-itis

Imagine you have a sidebar with 3 boxes. The first box is logging in, the second box is for an already logged in user and the third box is simply a series of links (a tag cloud, maybe). All three boxes should be styled similarly so let's start with the basics:

.sidebar-box
  +clearfix
  margin: 0 0 10px 0
  background: #eee
  +border-radius
  padding: 10px

Now, any div element we assign a class of sidebar-box will be cleared, have a bottom margin, a background color, rounded-corners and an internal padding. Now let's develop a login/logout box which has some specifics for form controls.

.sidebar-auth-box
  @extend .sidebar-box
  input[type=text]
    padding: 10px
    border: 1px solid #ccc

Now, any div element we assign a class of sidebar-auth-box will behave identically to the standard sidebar-box, but will also have custom styling for form inputs. Finally, the logout box will be a darker color to help it stand out. Before @extend, we might have ended up with a tag like this:

<div id="logout-box" class="sidebar-box sidebar-auth-box">

Now, we can keep our HTML simple and continue with another @extend:

#login-box
  @extend .sidebar-auth-box
#logout-box
  @extend .sidebar-auth-box
  background: #bbb
#links-box
  @extend .sidebar-box

This requires only an id on the three boxes, but we don't repeat ourselves. You'll also notice that the plain CSS classes are still available to place on div elements for rapid development or if custom id attributes are not needed. For those who are curious what the output looks like, here it is:

.sidebar-box, 
.sidebar-auth-box, 
#login-box, 
#logout-box, 
#links-box {
  overflow: hidden;
  display: inline-block;
  margin: 0 0 10px 0;
  background: #eeeeee;
  -moz-border-radius: 5px;
  -webkit-border-radius: 5px;
  -o-border-radius: 5px;
  -ms-border-radius: 5px;
  -khtml-border-radius: 5px;
  border-radius: 5px;
  padding: 10px; }
  .sidebar-box, 
  .sidebar-auth-box, 
  #login-box, 
  #logout-box, 
  #links-box {
    display: block; }

.sidebar-auth-box input[type=text], 
#login-box input[type=text], 
#logout-box input[type=text] {
  padding: 10px;
  border: 1px solid #cccccc; }

#logout-box {
  background: #bbbbbb; }