What are design tokens ?

Design tokens are the fundamental variables defining the precise behavior and rendering of ui components.

For example:

• The primary color of a text element
• The standard spacing between two elements
• The border radius of a button
• ...

In this section we will install the library and generate the file that contains the design tokens of your app in order to make Cunningham's Design System yours!

Install the lib

yarn add @openfun/cunningham-tokens

If you prefer using Typescript, create a file named cunningham.ts at the root of your project

export default {
  theme: {
    colors: {
      primary: "purple",
    },
  },
};

Or if you prefer Javascript, create a file named cunningham.cjs at the root of your project

module.exports = {
  theme: {
    colors: {
      primary: "purple",
    },
  },
};

In this configuration file you can overwrite all the default values of the design system. You can find the default values here.

Now add this script to your package.json

{
    "scripts": {
        ...
        "build-theme": "cunningham -g css"
    }
}

The cunningham CLI's main purpose is to build a ad-hoc CSS,JS,TS files that contain all your customized design tokens, by taking into account your local configuration ( defined in the file that you previously created : cunningham.cjs, it is worth mentioning that this file is optional, hence it will generate a file containing the default values of the design system )

You can run yarn run cunningham -h to see the available options.

And in order to generate the tokens css file, run

yarn build-theme

It will generate a file named cunningham-tokens.css. Don't forget to run this command everytime you change the content of the cunningham.cjs file !

Then, add these lines at the top of your main stylesheet file:

@import "cunningham-tokens"; // Imports the file you just generated.
@import "@openfun/cunningham-react/style";

It's all done!

You can also generate Typescript or Javascript files using the -g option. Example: cunningham -g css,ts,js

Design tokens variable are all present in the cunningham-tokens.css file. They are all prefixed with --c in order to avoid collision.

Here is an example to make the text's color renders with the value of the primary color in .my-element matching elements

.my-element {
  color: var(--c--colors--primary);
}

If you previously specified -g ts option you will have a cunningham-tokens.ts file generated. You can import it in your Typescript files and use the design tokens like this:

import { tokens } from "./cunningham-tokens";

const myColor = tokens.theme.colors.primary;

If you previously specified -g js option you will have a cunningham-tokens.js file generated. You can import it in your Javascript files and use the design tokens like this:

import { tokens } from "./cunningham-tokens.js";

const myColor = tokens.theme.colors.primary;