Smartless4laravel : Advanced LESS compiler for Laravel

Special thanks to leafo for lessphp and also rhukster for LESSisMore upon which smartless4laravel is based.

Smartless4laravel is a composer package for the Laravel PHP Framework that builds on LESSisMore by utilizing the latest version of and provides several new features such as smart compile only when LESS files (provided by lessphp) or config options have been modified, compressed output, injectable LESS variables + more...

Key Features

• Utilizes lessphp's built-in smart compile option for automatically compiling LESS files when they are modified
• Ability to set formatter and produced compressed CSS output
• Option to retain CSS comments in compiled code
• Ability to set LESS variables from configuration for more dynamic generated CSS
• Will take into account nested and @import'ed LESS files and automatically recompile if any single file changes
• Will automatically recompile if you make a change to the configuration options
• Takes advantage of Larvel's built-in cache system
• Currently using lessphp version >=0.3.8

Quick Start

1. Add the package to composer.json

    "hailwood/smartless4laravel": "*",
   

2. Add it to your application's app.php under the providers key

    'Hailwood\Smartless4laravel\Smartless4laravelServiceProvider'
   

3. Publish the config

    php artisan config:publish hailwood/smartless4laravel
   

Configuration Options

All configuration arrays are optional although you must have one of the directories, files or snippets settings or nothing will be compiled.

Directories

You can use the Directories setting to point to a LESS directory path. LESSisMore will iterate over the LESS files found in the path and output them to the CSS path provided using the basename of each LESS file found. For example if you configured application/config/less.php :

return array(
	'directories' => array(
		app('path') . '/less' =>  app('path.public') . '/css',
	),
);

Would result in all files matching app/less/*.less (case-insensitive, non-recursive) being compiled to CSS in the public/css directory. For example, the file application/less/test.less compiles to public/css/test.css.

If you want to specify single LESS files or want to specify the output filenames specifically, use the files option.

Files

The files array is nearly identical to the directories array except that you specify individual input LESS files and names of the output compiled CSS files. In application/config/less.php:

return array(
	'files' => array(
		'files' => array(
	        app('path') . '/less/custom.less'                   => app('path.public') . '/css/custom.css',
	        app('path') . '/less/bootstrap/bootstrap.less'      => app('path.public') . '/css/bootstrap.css',
	        app('path') . '/less/bootstrap/responsive.less'     => app('path.public') . '/css/bootstrap-responsive.css',
	    ),
	),
);

This will compile 3 less files to their respective output CSS files. For example, the first entry takes app/less/custom.less and compiles it to public/css/custom.css.

NOTE: This even works for complex LESS files such as bootstrap.less that contains many @import definitions to other LESS files.

Snippets

Snippets are a hold over from LESSisMore and provide the ability to put a chunk of LESS in the configuration and have it output to a CSS file. Once again, in application/config/less.php:

return array(
	'snippets' => array(
		'#content { background: #f00; h1 { color: #0f0; } }' => app('path.public') . '/css/file.css',
	),
);

That should be pretty self-explanatory.

Formatter

The formatter setting is completely optional, but it provides the ability to set the formatter used when compiling the LESS files. The available options from lessphp are:

• lessjs (default) — Same style used in LESS for JavaScript
• compressed — Compresses all the unrequired whitespace
• classic — lessphp’s original formatter

Preserve Comments

The preserveComments setting takes a true or a false values and just instructs the LESS compiler whether or not to retain any comments found in the LESS files. Pretty self explanatory.

Variables

the variables setting is pretty handy and darn powerful. It simply consists of an array of key => value pairs that are used by the compiler to replace @keys in the LESS files with the provided value. For example, say you application had the ability to be branded based on a form that let you pick colors via a color chooser. If those colors were then saved in the database you could dynamically inject those values into your LESS and in turn into your compiled CSS files with the following in your application/config/less.php:

// Load the branding data from the database
$branding = Branding::find(1);

return array(
    'files' => array(
        app('path') . '/less/custom.less' => app('path.public') . '/css/custom.css',
    ),
    'variables' => array(
    	'header-bg'    => $branding->header_bg,
    	'header-text'  => $branding->header_text,
        'body-bg'      => $branding->body_bg,
        'body-text'    => $branding->body_text,
    ),
);

This would take the following from your custom.less file:

.header {
	background: @header-bg;
	color: @header-text;
}

.body {
	background: @body-bg;
	color: @body-text;
}

and generate the resulting CSS in your custom.css file:

.header {
  background: #333333;
  color: #cccccc;
}
.body {
  background: #fefefe;
  color: #396e9c;
}

Of course with Smartless4laravel's smart compilation capability, the CSS files would only be re-compiled if you modified the variables in the Branding table.

Force Recompile

If you have the need you can force compilation on every request by setting the recompile setting to true. This is not really advised but the option is there if you need it.

Artisan Commands

smartless4laravel is fully integrated with artisan,

php artisan smartless

Try it, trust me, you want to try it :D

php artisan smartless:compile

Compiles the LESS files, This command should be used to debug any issues compiling the LESS files.

View the help for available flags.

Technical Notes

The logic in Smartless4laravel utilizes the Laravel cache system to store a recent serialized copy of each of the compiled files and also the configuration data. These files are used to determine if anything has changed between runs. If for some reason your get into a state where you think the compiler should recompile and it does not, just delete or clear the Laravel cache, and it will be forced to re-run on the next page load. The entries are prefixed with less- as you can see in the example below:

less-7b970ea0f54bf36d2258802e8e109ee5
less-9d610ad27a4caf3a762c4dd7eae064a8
less-config
less-fef1984f647cea8443ef978b2e546375