Lengthy

MicroLibrary for SVG Shape Length in a CSS Var

Lengthy is a JavaScript microlibrary (1.2kb min, 0.7kb gzipped) to get the length of SVG shapes. The length will automatically be added to the element as a CSS Var to make it easy to do CSS animations of SVG stroke-dashoffset for the wonderful line drawing SVG technique and other interesting animations.

• CSS Animation Demo
• JavaScript Animation Demo
• Shape Test

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Installation

Add Lengthy to a projects with npm:

npm install -s lengthy-svg

For easy embedding on platforms like Codepen, use unpkg

<script src="https://unpkg.com/lengthy-svg/lengthy-svg.js"></script>

---

Usage

Simply call Lengthy on a specific element, list of elements or a selector. The affected elements will receive a CSS var in their style and the lengthy class added.

Input

<svg viewBox="0 0 60 60">
  <circle data-lengthy cx="30" cy="30" r="20" />
</svg>

JavaScript

Lengthy("[data-lengthy]");

Output

<svg viewBox="0 0 60 60">
  <circle data-lengthy cx="30" cy="30" r="20" class="lengthy" style="--path-length:124.854;"></circle>
</svg>

---

CSS Animation

For a standard line-drawing animation, this is the CSS required.

It should be a relatively simple setup, but unfortunately, Chrome/Blink has a glitch with the CSS var animation keyframes. Chrome incorrectly treats a unitless calc()'d var() animation as a "discrete" animation, snapping to each value instead of transitioning between the values.

Firefox and Webkit/Blink all use unprefixed animation-name, so to target Webkit/Blink specifically, you'll use -webkit-animation-name for the override, then -moz-animation-name to override back for Firefox.

CSS Animation Demo

.lengthy {
  stroke-dasharray: var(--path-length) var(--path-length);

  animation-duration: 3s;
  animation-timing-function: cubic-bezier(0.5, 0, 0.5, 1);
  animation-iteration-count: infinite;
  animation-direction: alternate;

  animation-name: stroke-move;
  /* Override keyframes to fix a webkit glitch */
  -webkit-animation-name: webkit-stroke-move;
  /* Override yet again back to the original keyframes since Firefox obeys -webkit properties */
  -moz-animation-name: stroke-move;
}

@keyframes stroke-move {
  0%,
  10% {
    stroke-dashoffset: calc(1 * var(--path-length));
  }
  90%,
  100% {
    stroke-dashoffset: calc(-1 * var(--path-length));
  }
}

/**
 * Webkit does not support animating the stroke-dashoffset value _without_ a unit,
 * so we have to deliver a separate keyframe list via -webkit-animation-name
 */
@keyframes webkit-stroke-move {
  0%,
  10% {
    stroke-dashoffset: calc(1px * var(--path-length));
  }
  90%,
  100% {
    stroke-dashoffset: calc(-1px * var(--path-length));
  }
}

---

JavaScript Animation

Lengthy will return an array containing all the elements affected and their lengths if you want to use a JavaScript animation library like TweenRex or use the length data for other purposes.

JavaScript Animation Demo

const targets = Lengthy(".stripe");

const tweens = targets.map(function(target) {
  target.el.style.strokeDasharray = target.length;
  return {
    duration: 3000,
    subscribe: tweenrex.interpolate({
      targets: target.el,
      strokeWidth: [2, 4, 2],
      strokeDashoffset: [target.length, -target.length]
    })
  };
});

const t1 = TweenRex({
  onFinish: function() {
    t1.restart();
  }
});
t1.add(tweens, { stagger: 500 });
t1.restart();