figma_tokens_gen

Generate Flutter Color constants and palette maps from Figma design-token JSON exports.

Point it at the JSON your design team exports, and get a checked-in Dart file with one static const Color per token — no runtime parsing, no asset lookup, no string keys in your widget code.

Container(color: AppColors.primaryMain);

Requirements

	Version
Dart SDK	3.12.0 or newer
Flutter (for the generated code)	3.44.0 or newer

Flutter 3.44 moved the Material widgets into their own material_ui package, so that is what the generated file imports:

dependencies:
  material_ui: ">=1.0.0 <2.0.0"

On a project still importing package:flutter/material.dart, pass --material-import package:flutter/material.dart and the generated file will use the old import instead. The generator itself is pure Dart and depends on neither.

Install

As a dev dependency in the project you want to generate into:

dart pub add --dev figma_tokens_gen

Or add it to pubspec.yaml yourself. It is a build-time tool, so it belongs in dev_dependencies — it never ships in your app:

dev_dependencies:
  figma_tokens_gen: ">=1.1.2 <2.0.0"

then:

dart pub get      # or: flutter pub get

Or install it globally, to use across projects without adding a dependency:

dart pub global activate figma_tokens_gen

Use

dart run figma_tokens_gen --input tokens --output lib/generated/theme

Option	Default	Meaning
-i, --input	tokens	Directory (searched recursively) or a single JSON file
-o, --output	lib/generated/theme	Directory the generated file is written to
--class-name	AppColors	Name of the constants class
--palette-class-name	AppColorPalette	Name of the palette-map class
--file-name	app_colors.dart	Name of the generated file
--material-import	package:material_ui/material_ui.dart	Import the generated file uses for Color
--no-palettes	(palettes on)	Skip the Map<String, Color> class
--strict	off	Exit non-zero if any token was skipped
-q, --quiet	off	Suppress progress output (warnings still print)

Input

Every top-level object is a category; objects inside it are tokens, or further groups of tokens. Three value shapes are accepted, so you should not have to change your export settings:

{
  "primary": {
    "main":       { "$value": { "hex": "#3B5BFF" }, "$type": "color" },
    "light":      { "$value": "#8FA3FF" },
    "extraLight": "#E4E9FF"
  }
}

• DTCG — {"$value": ...}, the current format: the W3C draft that Figma's own variable export and recent Tokens Studio versions write
• Legacy — {"value": ...}, written by older Figma token plugins
• Bare — the value directly

Both the current $-prefixed export and older exports work as-is, so upgrading your Figma plugin does not require changing anything here — and the two shapes can be mixed within a single file, which is what a partly re-exported token set looks like in practice.

Colour values may be #RGB, #RGBA, #RRGGBB, #RRGGBBAA, a {"hex": ...} map with an optional a (or alpha) field, {"r":…, "g":…, "b":…, "a":…} channels in either 0–1 or 0–255 form, or the W3C colour object Figma's variable export writes — {"colorSpace": "srgb", "components": [r, g, b], "alpha": …, "hex": …}. Its alpha is applied to the hex, which carries none; components in a colour space other than srgb are not converted, so those tokens need a hex.

Non-colour tokens (spacing, typography) and plugin metadata keys ($extensions, $themes, $metadata) are skipped. A token is not a colour when it declares another type — $type, or type in the legacy shape, on the token or on a group above it — which is what keeps a font weight of "700" from being read as the hex colour #770000. Tokens that declare no type are taken as colours when their value parses as one. Inside an input directory, Tokens Studio's $themes.json and $metadata.json are skipped as files.

Nested groups

Groups nest to any depth, which is how Figma's own Variables export writes a name like color/brand/primary. The top-level key stays the category and the rest becomes the token name:

{
  "color": {
    "brand": { "primary": { "$value": "#3B5BFF" } },
    "surface": { "$value": "#F7F8FA" }
  }
}

static const Color colorBrandPrimary = Color(0xFF3B5BFF);
static const Color colorSurface = Color(0xFFF7F8FA);

The palette key drops the category the same way it always has, so the token above is AppColorPalette.color['brandPrimary'].

Aliases

A {group.token} value is followed to the token it names — the reference a semantic layer uses to point at a primitive one:

{
  "primitive": { "blue500": { "$value": "#3B5BFF" } },
  "action":    { "primary": { "$value": "{primitive.blue500}" } }
}

Both AppColors.primitiveBlue500 and AppColors.actionPrimary come out as Color(0xFF3B5BFF). References resolve after every input file is merged, so the primitive may live in a different file from the token pointing at it — which is how Tokens Studio splits them. Chains and /-separated paths work too.

A reference that names nothing, or a cycle, is reported rather than silently dropped:

Warning: Token "action/primary" references "{primitive.blue600}", which no
token defines. It was skipped.

Warnings go to stderr and print even under --quiet, because a skipped token is a token missing from the generated file, not progress noise. The rest of the tokens still generate; pass --strict to make a warning fail the run, which is what you want in CI. Pass TokenParser(resolveAliases: false) to go back to treating a reference as an ordinary unparseable value.

Output

// GENERATED CODE - DO NOT MODIFY BY HAND
import 'package:material_ui/material_ui.dart';

abstract final class AppColors {
  // primary
  static const Color primaryMain = Color(0xFF3B5BFF);
  static const Color primaryExtraLight = Color(0xFFE4E9FF);
}

/// The same tokens grouped by category, for lookup by name.
abstract final class AppColorPalette {
  /// Tokens under the `primary` category.
  static const Map<String, Color> primary = {
    'main': Color(0xFF3B5BFF),
    'extraLight': Color(0xFFE4E9FF),
  };
}

Member names are category + Token in lowerCamelCase — primary/extraLight becomes primaryExtraLight. Names that would collide with a Dart reserved word get a trailing underscore; names starting with a digit get a $ prefix. Palette map keys are strings, so they keep the token name as authored — a 500 token is AppColorPalette.gray['500'].

Because nesting is flattened, two tokens can ask for the same name — brand/primary and brandPrimary both want colorBrandPrimary. The second one gets a 2 suffix and a comment in the generated file saying so, since two members of one name (or two identical keys in a const map) would not compile.

The output contains no timestamp, so re-running the generator with unchanged tokens produces no diff.

Multiple files

When --input is a directory, every .json file under it is read in sorted path order and merged. Categories and nested groups combine; a token declared twice is taken from the file that sorts last. Sorting is what makes the merge deterministic across machines and CI.

The merge happens before aliases are resolved, so a reference can cross files in either direction — a semantic file may point at primitives that sort after it.

Library API

Every stage is separately usable when the CLI is not enough — for example to fetch tokens over HTTP, or to emit a different shape of code:

import 'package:figma_tokens_gen/figma_tokens_gen.dart';

// Parse without touching the filesystem.
final tokens = const TokenParser().parseJson(jsonString);
print('${tokens.colorCount} colours in ${tokens.categories.length} categories');
for (final warning in tokens.warnings) print(warning);

// Or several documents at once, so aliases can resolve across them.
const parser = TokenParser();
final merged = parser.parseDocuments([
  parser.documentOf(primitivesJson),
  parser.documentOf(semanticJson),
]);

// Emit with your own class names.
final source = const DartColorsEmitter(className: 'BrandColors').emit(tokens);

// Or run the whole pipeline.
final result = await TokenConverter().convert(
  inputPath: 'tokens',
  outputPath: 'lib/generated/theme',
);

To generate something other than a Flutter colour class — a ThemeExtension, CSS variables, Compose tokens — implement TokenEmitter and pass it to TokenConverter. The parser and CLI need no changes.

Wiring it into a build

Add it to whatever runs your codegen, next to build_runner:

dart run figma_tokens_gen -i tokens -o lib/generated/theme -q --strict
dart format lib/generated/theme

Commit the generated file. Checking it in keeps builds reproducible and makes token changes visible in review.

License

MIT