[css] Import regular CSS file in SCSS file?

Is there anyway to import a regular CSS file with Sass's @import command? While I'm not using all of the SCSS syntax from sass, I do still enjoy it's combining/compressing features, and would like to be able to use it without renaming all of my files to *.scss

I figured out an elegant, Rails-like way to do it. First, rename your .scss file to .scss.erb, then use syntax like this (example for highlight_js-rails4 gem CSS asset):

@import "<%= asset_path("highlight_js/github") %>";

Why you can't host the file directly via SCSS:

Doing an @import in SCSS works fine for CSS files as long as you explicitly use the full path one way or another. In development mode, rails s serves assets without compiling them, so a path like this works...

@import "highlight_js/github.css";

...because the hosted path is literally /assets/highlight_js/github.css. If you right-click on the page and "view source", then click on the link for the stylesheet with the above @import, you'll see a line in there that looks like:

@import url(highlight_js/github.css);

The SCSS engine translates "highlight_js/github.css" to url(highlight_js/github.css). This will work swimmingly until you decide to try running it in production where assets are precompiled have a hash injected into the file name. The SCSS file will still resolve to a static /assets/highlight_js/github.css that was not precompiled and doesn't exist in production.

How this solution works:

Firstly, by moving the .scss file to .scss.erb, we have effectively turned the SCSS into a template for Rails. Now, whenever we use <%= ... %> template tags, the Rails template processor will replace these snippets with the output of the code (just like any other template).

Stating asset_path("highlight_js/github") in the .scss.erb file does two things:

1. Triggers the rake assets:precompile task to precompile the appropriate CSS file.
2. Generates a URL that appropriately reflects the asset regardless of the Rails environment.

This also means that the SCSS engine isn't even parsing the CSS file; it's just hosting a link to it! So there's no hokey monkey patches or gross workarounds. We're serving a CSS asset via SCSS as intended, and using a URL to said CSS asset as Rails intended. Sweet!

If I am correct css is compatible with scss so you can change the extension of a css to scss and it should continue to work. Once you change the extension you can import it and it will be included in the file.

If you don't do that sass will use the css @import which is something you don't want.

After having the same issue, I got confused with all the answers here and the comments over the repository of sass in github.

I just want to point out that as December 2014, this issue has been resolved. It is now possible to import css files directly into your sass file. The following PR in github solves the issue.

The syntax is the same as now - @import "your/path/to/the/file", without an extension after the file name. This will import your file directly. If you append *.css at the end, it will translate into the css rule @import url(...).

In case you are using some of the "fancy" new module bundlers such as webpack, you will probably need to use use ~ in the beginning of the path. So, if you want to import the following path node_modules/bootstrap/src/core.scss you would write something like
@import "~bootstrap/src/core".

NOTE:
It appears this isn't working for everybody. If your interpreter is based on libsass it should be working fine (checkout this). I've tested using @import on node-sass and it's working fine. Unfortunately this works and doesn't work on some ruby instances.

If you have a .css file which you don't wish to modify, neither change its extension to .scss (e.g. this file is from a forked project you don't maintain), you can always create a symlink and then import it into your .scss.

Creates a symlink:

ln -s path/to/css/file.css path/to/sass/files/_file.scss

Imports symlink file into a target .scss:

@import "path/to/sass/files/file";

Your target output .css file is going to hold contents from imported symlink .scss file, not a CSS import rule (mentioned by @yaz with highest comment votes). And you don't have duplicated files with different extensions, what means any update made inside initial .css file immediately gets imported into your target output.

Symbolic link (also symlink or soft link) is a special type of file that contains a reference to another file in the form of an absolute or relative path and that affects pathname resolution.
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link

You must prepend an underscore to the css file to be included, and switch its extension to scss (ex: _yourfile.scss). Then you just have to call it this way:

@import "yourfile";

And it will include the contents of the file, instead of using the CSS standard @import directive.

This was implemented and merged starting from version 3.2 (pull #754 merged on 2 Jan 2015 for libsass, issues originaly were defined here: sass#193 #556, libsass#318).

To cut the long story short, the syntax in next:

1. to import (include) the raw CSS-file

   the syntax is without .css extension at the end (results in actual read of partial s[ac]ss|css and include of it inline to SCSS/SASS):

   @import "path/to/file";

2. to import the CSS-file in a traditional way

   syntax goes in traditional way, with .css extension at the end (results to @import url("path/to/file.css"); in your compiled CSS):

   @import "path/to/file.css";

And it is damn good: this syntax is elegant and laconic, plus backward compatible! It works excellently with libsass and node-sass.

__

To avoid further speculations in comments, writing this explicitly: Ruby based Sass still has this feature unimplemented after 7 years of discussions. By the time of writing this answer, it's promised that in 4.0 there will be a simple way to accomplish this, probably with the help of @use. It seems there will be an implementation very soon, the new "planned" "Proposal Accepted" tag was assigned for the issue #556 and the new @use feature.

answer might be updated, as soon as something changes.

Good news everyone, Chris Eppstein created a compass plugin with inline css import functionality:

https://github.com/chriseppstein/sass-css-importer

Now, importing a CSS file is as easy as:

@import "CSS:library/some_css_file"

Simple.

@import "path/to/file.css";

It is now possible using:

@import 'CSS:directory/filename.css';

You can use a third-party importer to customise @import semantics.

node-sass-import-once, which works with node-sass (for Node.js) can inline import CSS files.

Example of direct usage:

var sass = require('node-sass');,
    importOnce = require('node-sass-import-once');

sass.render({
  file: "input.scss",
  importer: importOnce,
  importOnce: {
    css: true,
  }
});

Example grunt-sass config:

var importOnce = require("node-sass-import-once");
grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-sass");

grunt.initConfig({
  sass: {
    options: {
      sourceMap: true,
      importer: importOnce
    },
    dev: {
      files: {
        "dist/style.css": "scss/**/*.scss"
      }
    }
  });

Note that node-sass-import-once cannot currently import Sass partials without an explicit leading underscore. For example with the file partials/_partial.scss:

• @import partials/_partial.scss succeeds
• @import * partials/partial.scss fails

In general, be aware that a custom importer could change any import semantics. Read the docs before you start using it.

Simple workaround:

All, or nearly all css file can be also interpreted as if it would be scss. It also enables to import them inside a block. Rename the css to scss, and import it so.

In my actual configuration I do the following:

First I copy the .css file into a temporary one, this time with .scss extension. Grunt example config:

copy: {
    dev: {
        files: [
            {
                src: "node_modules/some_module/some_precompiled.css",
                dest: "target/resources/some_module_styles.scss"
            }
        ]
    }
}

Then you can import the .scss file from your parent scss (in my example, it is even imported into a block):

my-selector {
  @import "target/resources/some_module_styles.scss";
  ...other rules...
}

Note: this could be dangerous, because it will effectively result that the css will be parsed multiple times. Check your original css for that it contains any scss-interpretable artifact (it is improbable, but if it happen, the result will be hard to debug and dangerous).

I can confirm this works:

class CSSImporter < Sass::Importers::Filesystem
  def extensions
    super.merge('css' => :scss)
  end
end

view_context = ActionView::Base.new
css = Sass::Engine.new(
  template,
  syntax:     :scss,
  cache:      false,
  load_paths: Rails.application.assets.paths,
  read_cache: false,
  filesystem_importer: CSSImporter # Relevant option,

  sprockets:  {
    context:     view_context,
    environment: Rails.application.assets
  }
).render

Credit to Chriss Epstein: https://github.com/sass/sass/issues/193