emogrifier

Converts CSS styles into inline style attributes in your HTML code.

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Emogrifier

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n. e•mog•ri•fi•er [\ē-'mä-grƏ-,fī-Ər] - a utility for changing completely the
nature or appearance of HTML email, esp. in a particularly fantastic or bizarre
manner

Emogrifier converts CSS styles into inline style attributes in your HTML code.
This ensures proper display on email and mobile device readers that lack
stylesheet support.

This utility was developed as part of Intervals
to deal with the problems posed by certain email clients (namely Outlook 2007
and GoogleMail) when it comes to the way they handle styling contained in HTML
emails. As many web developers and designers already know, certain email
clients are notorious for their lack of CSS support. While attempts are being
made to develop common email standards,
implementation is still a ways off.

The primary problem with uncooperative email clients is that most tend to only
regard inline CSS, discarding all <style> elements and links to stylesheets
in <link> elements. Emogrifier solves this problem by converting CSS styles
into inline style attributes in your HTML code.

How it Works

Emogrifier automagically transmogrifies your HTML by parsing your CSS and
inserting your CSS definitions into tags within your HTML based on your CSS
selectors.

Installation

For installing emogrifier, either add pelago/emogrifier to the require
section in your project’s composer.json, or you can use composer as below:

composer require pelago/emogrifier

See https://getcomposer.org/ for more information and documentation.

Usage

Inlining Css

The most basic way to use the CssInliner class is to create an instance with
the original HTML, inline the external CSS, and then get back the resulting
HTML:

use Pelago\Emogrifier\CssInliner;

…

$visualHtml = CssInliner::fromHtml($html)->inlineCss($css)->render();

If there is no external CSS file and all CSS is located within <style>
elements in the HTML, you can omit the $css parameter:

$visualHtml = CssInliner::fromHtml($html)->inlineCss()->render();

If you would like to get back only the content of the <body> element instead
of the complete HTML document, you can use the renderBodyContent method
instead:

$bodyContent = $visualHtml = CssInliner::fromHtml($html)->inlineCss()
  ->renderBodyContent();

If you would like to modify the inlining process with any of the available
options, you will need to call the corresponding methods
before inlining the CSS. The code then would look like this:

$visualHtml = CssInliner::fromHtml($html)->disableStyleBlocksParsing()
  ->inlineCss($css)->render();

There are also some other HTML-processing classes available
(all of which are subclasses of AbstractHtmlProcessor) which you can use
to further change the HTML after inlining the CSS.
(For more details on the classes, please have a look at the sections below.)
CssInliner and all HTML-processing classes can share the same DOMDocument
instance to work on:

use Pelago\Emogrifier\CssInliner;
use Pelago\Emogrifier\HtmlProcessor\CssToAttributeConverter;
use Pelago\Emogrifier\HtmlProcessor\HtmlPruner;

…

$cssInliner = CssInliner::fromHtml($html)->inlineCss($css);
$domDocument = $cssInliner->getDomDocument();
HtmlPruner::fromDomDocument($domDocument)->removeElementsWithDisplayNone()
  ->removeRedundantClassesAfterCssInlined($cssInliner);
$finalHtml = CssToAttributeConverter::fromDomDocument($domDocument)
  ->convertCssToVisualAttributes()->render();

Normalizing and cleaning up HTML

The HtmlNormalizer class normalizes the given HTML in the following ways:

  • add a document type (HTML5) if missing
  • disentangle incorrectly nested tags
  • add HEAD and BODY elements (if they are missing)

The class can be used like this:

use Pelago\Emogrifier\HtmlProcessor\HtmlNormalizer;

…

$cleanHtml = HtmlNormalizer::fromHtml($rawHtml)->render();

Converting CSS styles to visual HTML attributes

The CssToAttributeConverter converts a few style attributes values to visual
HTML attributes. This allows to get at least a bit of visual styling for email
clients that do not support CSS well. For example, style="width: 100px"
will be converted to width="100".

The class can be used like this:

use Pelago\Emogrifier\HtmlProcessor\CssToAttributeConverter;

…

$visualHtml = CssToAttributeConverter::fromHtml($rawHtml)
  ->convertCssToVisualAttributes()->render();

You can also have the CssToAttributeConverter work on a DOMDocument:

$visualHtml = CssToAttributeConverter::fromDomDocument($domDocument)
  ->convertCssToVisualAttributes()->render();

Evaluating CSS custom properties (variables)

The CssVariableEvaluator class can be used to apply the values of CSS
variables defined in inline style attributes to inline style properties which
use them.

For example, the following CSS defines and uses a custom property:

:root {
    --text-color: green;
}

p {
    color: var(--text-color);
}

After CssInliner has inlined that CSS on the (contrived) HTML
<html><body><p></p></body></html>, it will look like this:


<html style="--text-color: green;">
    <body>
        <p style="color: var(--text-color);">
        <p>
    </body>
</html>

The CssVariableEvaluator method evaluateVariables will apply the value of
--text-color so that the paragraph style attribute becomes color: green;.

It can be used like this:

use Pelago\Emogrifier\HtmlProcessor\CssVariableEvaluator;

…

$evaluatedHtml = CssVariableEvaluator::fromHtml($html)
  ->evaluateVariables()->render();

You can also have the CssVariableEvaluator work on a DOMDocument:

$evaluatedHtml = CssVariableEvaluator::fromDomDocument($domDocument)
  ->evaluateVariables()->render();

Removing redundant content and attributes from the HTML

The HtmlPruner class can reduce the size of the HTML by removing elements with
a display: none style declaration, and/or removing classes from class
attributes that are not required.

It can be used like this:

use Pelago\Emogrifier\HtmlProcessor\HtmlPruner;

…

$prunedHtml = HtmlPruner::fromHtml($html)->removeElementsWithDisplayNone()
  ->removeRedundantClasses($classesToKeep)->render();

The removeRedundantClasses method accepts an allowlist of names of classes
that should be retained. If this is a post-processing step after inlining CSS,
you can alternatively use removeRedundantClassesAfterCssInlined, passing it
the CssInliner instance that has inlined the CSS (and having the HtmlPruner
work on the DOMDocument). This will use information from the CssInliner to
determine which classes are still required (namely, those used in uninlinable
rules that have been copied to a <style> element):

$prunedHtml = HtmlPruner::fromDomDocument($cssInliner->getDomDocument())
  ->removeElementsWithDisplayNone()
  ->removeRedundantClassesAfterCssInlined($cssInliner)->render();

The removeElementsWithDisplayNone method will not remove any elements which
have the class -emogrifier-keep. So if, for example, there are elements which
by default have display: none but are revealed by an @media rule, or which
are intended as a preheader, you can add that class to those elements. The
paragraph in this HTML snippet will not be removed even though it has
display: none (which has presumably been applied by CssInliner::inlineCss()
from a CSS rule .preheader { display: none; }):

<p class="preheader -emogrifier-keep" style="display: none;">
    Hello World!
</p>

The removeRedundantClassesAfterCssInlined (or removeRedundantClasses)
method, if invoked after removeElementsWithDisplayNone, will remove the
-emogrifier-keep class.

Options

There are several options that you can set on the CssInliner instance before
calling the inlineCss method:

  • ->disableStyleBlocksParsing() - By default, CssInliner will grab
    all <style> blocks in the HTML and will apply the CSS styles as inline
    “style” attributes to the HTML. The <style> blocks will then be removed
    from the HTML. If you want to disable this functionality so that CssInliner
    leaves these <style> blocks in the HTML and does not parse them, you should
    use this option. If you use this option, the contents of the <style> blocks
    will not be applied as inline styles and any CSS you want CssInliner to
    use must be passed in as described in the Usage section above.
  • ->disableInlineStyleAttributesParsing() - By default, CssInliner
    preserves all of the “style” attributes on tags in the HTML you pass to it.
    However if you want to discard all existing inline styles in the HTML before
    the CSS is applied, you should use this option.
  • ->addAllowedMediaType(string $mediaName) - By default, CssInliner
    will keep only media types all, screen and print. If you want to keep
    some others, you can use this method to define them.
  • ->removeAllowedMediaType(string $mediaName) - You can use this
    method to remove media types that Emogrifier keeps.
  • ->addExcludedSelector(string $selector) - Keeps elements from
    being affected by CSS inlining. Note that only elements matching the supplied
    selector(s) will be excluded from CSS inlining, not necessarily their
    descendants. If you wish to exclude an entire subtree, you should provide
    selector(s) which will match all elements in the subtree, for example by using
    the universal selector:
    $cssInliner->addExcludedSelector('.message-preview');
$cssInliner->addExcludedSelector('.message-preview *');
  • ->addExcludedCssSelector(string $selector) - Contrary to
    addExcludedSelector, which excludes HTML nodes, this method excludes CSS
    selectors from being inlined. This is for example useful if you don’t want
    your CSS reset rules to be inlined on each HTML node (e.g.
    * { margin: 0; padding: 0; font-size: 100% }).
    Note that these selectors must precisely match the selectors you wish to
    exclude.
    Meaning that excluding .example will not exclude p .example.
    $cssInliner->addExcludedCssSelector('*');
$cssInliner->addExcludedCssSelector('form');
  • ->removeExcludedCssSelector(string $selector) - Removes previously added
    excluded selectors, if any.
    $cssInliner->removeExcludedCssSelector('form');

Migrating from the dropped Emogrifier class to the CssInliner class

Minimal example

Old code using Emogrifier:

$emogrifier = new Emogrifier($html);
$html = $emogrifier->emogrify();

New code using CssInliner:

$html = CssInliner::fromHtml($html)->inlineCss()->render();

NB: In this example, the old code removes elements with display: none;
while the new code does not, as the default behaviors of the old and
the new class differ in this regard.

More complex example

Old code using Emogrifier:

$emogrifier = new Emogrifier($html, $css);
$emogrifier->enableCssToHtmlMapping();

$html = $emogrifier->emogrify();

New code using CssInliner and family:

$domDocument = CssInliner::fromHtml($html)->inlineCss($css)->getDomDocument();

HtmlPruner::fromDomDocument($domDocument)->removeElementsWithDisplayNone();
$html = CssToAttributeConverter::fromDomDocument($domDocument)
  ->convertCssToVisualAttributes()->render();

Supported CSS selectors

Emogrifier currently supports the following
CSS selectors:

The following selectors are not implemented yet:

Rules involving the following selectors cannot be applied as inline styles.
They will, however, be preserved and copied to a <style> element in the HTML:

Caveats

  • Emogrifier requires the HTML and the CSS to be UTF-8. Encodings like
    ISO8859-1 or ISO8859-15 are not supported.
  • Emogrifier preserves all applicable @media rules. Media queries can be very
    useful in responsive email design. See
    media query support.
    However, in order for them to be effective, you may need to add !important
    to some of the declarations within them so that they will override CSS styles
    that have been inlined. For example, with the following CSS, the font-size
    declaration in the @media rule would not override the font size for p
    elements from the preceding rule after that has been inlined as
    <p style="font-size: 16px;"> in the HTML, without the !important directive
    (even though !important would not be necessary if the CSS were not inlined):
    p {
  font-size: 16px;
}
@media (max-width: 640px) {
  p {
    font-size: 14px !important;
  }
}
    Any CSS custom properties (variables) defined in @media rules cannot be
    applied to CSS property values that have been inlined and evaluated. However,
    @media rules using custom properties (with var()) would still be able to
    obtain their values (from the inlined definitions or @media rules) in email
    clients that support custom properties.
  • Emogrifier cannot inline CSS rules involving selectors with pseudo-elements
    (such as ::after) or dynamic pseudo-classes (such as :hover) – it is
    impossible. However, such rules will be preserved and copied to a <style>
    element, as for @media rules, with the same caveats applying.
  • Emogrifier will grab existing inline style attributes and will
    grab <style> blocks from your HTML, but it will not grab CSS files
    referenced in <link> elements or @import rules (though it will leave them
    intact for email clients that support them).
  • Even with styles inline, certain CSS properties are ignored by certain email
    clients. For more information, refer to these resources:
  • All CSS attributes that apply to an element will be applied, even if they are
    redundant. For example, if you define a font attribute and a font-size
    attribute, both attributes will be applied to that element (in other words,
    the more specific attribute will not be combined into the more general
    attribute).
  • There’s a good chance you might encounter problems if your HTML is not
    well-formed and valid (DOMDocument might complain). If you get problems like
    this, consider running your HTML through
    Tidy before you pass it to
    Emogrifier.
  • Emogrifier automatically converts the provided (X)HTML into HTML5, i.e.,
    self-closing tags will lose their slash. To keep your HTML valid, it is
    recommended to use HTML5 instead of one of the XHTML variants.

API and deprecation policy

Please have a look at our
API and deprecation policy.

Contributing

Contributions in the form of bug reports, feature requests, or pull requests are
more than welcome. 🙏 Please have a look at our
contribution guidelines to learn more about how to
contribute to Emogrifier.

Steps to release a new version

  1. In the composer.json, update the branch-alias entry to
    point to the release after the upcoming release.
  2. In the CHANGELOG.md, create a new section with subheadings
    for changes after the upcoming release, set the version number for the
    upcoming release, and remove any empty sections.
  3. Update the target milestone in the Dependabot configuration.
  4. Create a pull request “Prepare release of version x.y.z” with those changes.
  5. Have the pull request reviewed and merged.
  6. Tag the new release.
  7. In the Releases tab,
    create a new release and copy the change log entries to the new release.
  8. Post about the new release on social media.

Maintainers