This task converts all data found within a stylesheet (those within a url( ... ) declaration) into base64-encoded data URI strings. This includes images and fonts.

Features

• Supports both local & remote images.
• Ability to specify a size limit. Default is 32kb, or IE8's limit.
• Existing data URIs will be ignored.
• Skip specific images by specifying a directive comment.
• Ability to purge images that have been encoded
• Includes two helpers: encode_stylesheet to encode a stylesheet, and encode_image to encode an image.

Getting Started

Install this plugin with: grunt install grunt-image-embed

Next, add this line to your project's grunt.js file:

grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-image-embed");

Lastly, add the configuration settings to your grunt.js file.

Documentation

This task has two required properties, src and dest. src is the path to your stylesheet and dest is the file this task will write to (relative to the grunt.js file). If this file already exists it will be overwritten.

An example configuration looks like this:

grunt.initConfig({
  imageEmbed: {
    dist: {
      src: [ "css/styles.css" ],
      dest: "css/output.css",
      deleteAfterEncoding : false
    }
  }
});

Optional Configuration Properties

ImageEmbed can be customized by specifying the following options:

• maxImageSize: The maximum size of the base64 string in bytes. This defaults to 32768, or IE8's limit. Set this to 0 to remove the limit and allow any size string.
• baseDir: If you have absolute image paths in your stylesheet, the path specified in this option will be used as the base directory.
• deleteAfterEncoding: Set this to true to delete images after they've been encoded. You'll want to do this in a staging area, and not in your source directories. Be careful.

Skipping Images

Specify that an image should be skipped by adding the following comment after the image:

background: url(image.gif); /*ImageEmbed:skip*/

Known Issues

• if you minify your file before running this task, most likely you've stripped comments. In this case, /ImageEmbed:skip/ will not work.

License

Copyright (c) 2012 Eric Hynds (@erichynds) Licensed under the MIT License.