Steps to add Tailwind in ASP.NET 6 MVC Project:

Video tutorial: https://youtu.be/HndP-Yh8WKc

Requirements:

• NodeJS
• .NET 6
• Terminal Emulator (Works with Powershell in Windows and bash or zsh in Linux)

Step 1:

Create the project in Visual Studio or the dotnet CLI

Step 2:

Start a node project

npm init -y

Step 3:

Add Tailwind

npm install -D tailwindcss

Step 4:

Add script to package.json for the css output location

"scripts": {
    "css:build": "npx tailwindcss -i ./wwwroot/css/site.css -o ./wwwroot/css/styles.css --minify"
  }

Step 5:

Init the tailwind config file

npx tailwindcss init

Step 6:

Add modules to tailwind.config.json, this is for tailwind to style razor pages:

module.exports = {
    content: [
       './Pages/**/*.cshtml',
       './Views/**/*.cshtml'
],
    theme: {
        extend: {},
    },
    plugins: [],
}

Step 7:

Add input css to site.css in wwwroot/css

@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;

Step 8:

Add itemgroups in the project under the .csproj file, this is for building the css before deploying:

<ItemGroup>
  <UpToDateCheckBuilt Include="wwwroot/css/site.css" Set="Css" />
  <UpToDateCheckBuilt Include="tailwind.config.js" Set="Css" />
</ItemGroup>

<Target Name="Tailwind" BeforeTargets="Build">
  <Exec Command="npm run css:build"/>
</Target>

Step 9:

Include the path to the CSS file in the _Layout.cshtml file (Or the other views you need to style with tailwind)

<link rel="stylesheet" href="~/css/styles.css" asp-append-version="true" />