Figma to Code

Most design to code plugins are bad, some are even paid. This project aims to raise the bar by generating responsive layouts in Tailwind, Flutter and SwiftUI. The plan is to eventually add support for Jetpack Compose and possibly standard HTML or other frameworks like React Native, Bootstrap or Fluent. Feedback, ideas and partnerships are appreciated!

How it works

This plugin takes an unconventional approach to improve code quality: it optimizes the layout before the conversion to code even begins. The standard Figma Nodes (what represents each layer) is a joy to work with, but it can't modify a layer without modifying the user project. For this reason, I decided to virtualize it, remaking the official implementation and naming them AltNodes. During the process of converting a Node into an AltNode, the plugin does the following:

That process can also be seen as an Intermediate Representation and might allow this plugin to, one day, live outside Figma.

Hard cases

When finding the unknown (a Group or Frame with more than one child and no vertical or horizontal alignment), Tailwind mode uses insets for best cases and left, top from standard CSS for the worst cases. Flutter mode uses Stack and Positioned.fill. Both are usually not recommended and can easily defeat the responsiveness. In many scenarios, just wrapping some elements in a Group or Frame can solve:

Tip: Instead of selecting the whole page, you can also select individual items. This can be useful for both debugging and componentization. For example: you can use the plugin to generate the code of a single element and then replicate it using a for-loop.

Todo

• Vectors (tricky in HTML, unsupported in Flutter)
• Images (they are local, how to support them?)
• Line/Star/Polygon (todo. Rectangle and Ellipse were prioritized and are more common)
• The source code is fully commented and there are more than 30 "todo"s there

Tailwind limitations

• Width: Tailwind has a maximum width of 384px. If an item passes this, the width will be set to w-full (unless it is already relative like w-1/2, w-1/3, etc). This is usually a feature, but be careful: if most layers in your project are larger than 384px, the plugin's result might be less than optimal.

Flutter limits and ideas

• Stack: in some simpler cases, a Stack could be replaced with a Container and a BoxDecoration. Discover those cases and optimize them.
• Material Styles: text could be matched to existing Material styles (like outputting Headline6 when text size is 20).
• Identify Buttons: the plugin could identify specific buttons and output them instead of always using Container or Material.

How to build the project

Package Manager

The project is configured for pnpm. To install, see the installation notes for pnpm.

Monorepo

The plugin is organized as a monorepo. There are several packages:

• packages/backend - Contains the business logic that reads the Figma API and converts nodes

• packages/plugin-ui - Contains the common UI for the plugin

• packages/eslint-config-custom - Config file for ESLint

• packages/tsconfig - Collection of TSConfig files used throughout the project

• apps/plugin - This is the actual plugin assembled from the parts in backend & plugin-ui. Within this folder it's divided between:

  • plugin-src - loads from backend and compiles to code.js
  • ui-src - loads the common plugin-ui and compiles to index.html

• apps/debug - This is a debug mode plugin that is a more convenient way to see all the UI elements.

The plugin is built using Turbo which in turn builds the internal packages.

Commands

pnpm run ...

• dev - runs the app in dev mode. This can be run in the Figma editor.
• build
• build:watch
• lint
• format - formats with prettier (warning: may edit files!)

Debug mode

When running the dev task, you can open http://localhost:3000 to see the debug version of the UI.

Issues

The Figma file for this README and icon is also open and welcome to changes! Check it here.

I took decisions thinking about how it would benefit the majority of people, but I can (and probably will!) be wrong many times. Found a bug? Have an idea for an improvement? Feel free to add an issue or email me. Pull requests are also more than welcome.