CSS value types

This page presents a brief overview of CSS types as used by this project. Note that these can be repeated as described in Multi-valued properties.


Numeric values consist of a number, or a number annotated with a measurement value. In general, it is wise to use measurement annotations most of the time, to avoid ambiguity and protect against potential future changes to the default units.

Currently, the supported units include:

  • Length

    • px pixels

    • m meters

    • ft feet

  • Angle

    • deg degrees

  • Ratio

    • % percentage

When using expressions in place of numeric values, the first unit listed for the type of measure is assumed.

Since the CSS module translates styles to SLD before any rendering occurs, its model of unit-of-measure is tied to that of SLD. In practice, this means that for any particular symbolizer, there only one unit-of-measure applied for the style. Therefore, the CSS module extracts that unit-of-measure from one special property for each symbolizer type. Those types are listed below for reference:

  • fill-size determines the unit-of-measure for polygon symbolizers (but that doesn’t matter so much since it is the only measure associated with fills)

  • stroke-width determines the unit-of-measure for line symbolizers

  • mark-size determines the unit-of-measure for point symbolizers

  • font-size determines the unit-of-measure for text symbolizers and the associated halos


String values consist of a small snippet of text. For example, a string could be a literal label to use for a subset of roads:

[lanes>20] {
        label: "Serious Freaking Highway";

Strings can be enclosed in either single or double quotes. It’s easiest to simply use whichever type of quotes are not in your string value, but you can escape quote characters by prefixing them with a backslash \. Backslash characters themselves must also be prefixed. For example, '\\\'' is a string value consisting of a single backslash followed by a single single quote character.


While labels aren’t really a special type of value, they deserve a special mention since labels are more likely to require special string manipulation than other CSS values.

If a label is a simple string value, then it works like any other string would:

[lanes > 20] {
    label: "Serious Freaking Highway";

However, if a label has multiple values, all of those values will be concatenated to form a single label:

[lanes > 20] {
   label: "Serious " "Freaking " "Highway";

Note the blank-space within the label strings here; no blank-space is added when concatenating strings, so you must be explicit about where you want it included. You can also mix CQL expressions in with literal string values here:

states {
   label: [STATE_NAME] " (" [STATE_ABBR] ")";


This automatic concatenation is currently a special feature only provided for labels. However, string concatenation is also supported directly in CQL expressions by using the strConcat filter function:

* { fill: [strConcat('#', color_hex)]; }

This form of concatenation works with any property that supports expressions.


Color values are relatively important to styling, so there are multiple ways to specify them.




A hexadecimal-encoded color value, with two digits each for red, green, and blue.


A hexadecimal-encoded color value, with one digits each for red, green, and blue. This is equivalent to the two-digit-per-channel encoding with each digit duplicated.

rgb(r, g, b)

A three-part color value with each channel represented by a value in the range 0 to 1, or in the range 0 to 255. 0 to 1 is used if any of the values include a decimal point, otherwise it is 0 to 255.

Simple name

The simple English name of the color. A full list of the supported colors is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/SVG/types.html#ColorKeywords

External references

When using external images to decorate map features, it is necessary to reference them by URL. This is done by a call to the url function. The URL value may be wrapped in single or double-quotes, or not at all. The same escaping rules as for string values. The url function is also a special case where the surrounding quote marks can usually be omitted. Some examples:

/* These properties are all equivalent. */

* {
    stroke: url("http://example.com/");
    stroke: url('http://example.com/');
    stroke: url(http://example.com/);


While relative URLs are supported, they will be fully resolved during the conversion process to SLD and written out as absolute URLs. This may be cause problems when relocating data directories, etc. The style can be regenerated with the current correct URL by opening it in the demo editor and using the Submit button there.

Well-known marks

As defined in the SLD standard, GeoServer’s css module also allows using a certain set of well-known mark types without having to provide graphic resources explicitly. These include:

  • circle

  • square

  • cross

  • star

  • arrow

And others. Additionally, vendors can provide an extended set of well-known marks, a facet of the standard that is exploited by some GeoTools plugins to provide dynamic map features such as using characters from TrueType fonts as map symbols, or dynamic charting. In support of these extended mark names, the css module provides a symbol function similar to url. The syntax is the same, aside from the function name:

* {
    mark: symbol(circle);
    mark: symbol('ttf://Times+New+Roman&char=0x19b2');
    mark: symbol("chart://type=pie&x&y&z");