I wanted to use Bootstrap 3 and Less together. Here is what I did:
installed Node.js
installed Less using npm
downloaded bootstrap source (in a different directory than my project's directory)
copied the entire '/less' subfolder to my project's working directory.
created my custom .less file (e.g. styles.less) and included the following:
#import '../less/bootstrap.less';
#import '../less/utilities.less';
compiled in the Node command prompt using: ' lessc styles.less > styles.css '
My question:
Do I now need to only include the compiled styles.css file with my project or do I have to include all the bootstrap components as well?
Also, is this workflow recommended? (I actually read something similar in a smashingmagazine.com article).
PS: Apologies in advance for this silly (I think) question.
Thanks!
If you used
#import "bootstrap.less";
..inside your main less file, then the bootstrap.less will be included during compiletime and will be inside your compiled styles.css.
After your styles.css has been compiled, you only need to include this file into your project.
PS. Also take a look inside your styles.css file, to see what has been compiled inside there. Or play around yourself/experiment. For example, create 2 different less files, #import them inside your main.less, compile and see what happens.
I have two less files. one named main.less which imports bootstrap.less (which includes bootstrap variables.. etc.) and dash.less which has just styles for my dashboard. These two files should generate two css files. main.css and dash.css.
I'm including the main.css in to all my pages and the dash.css in to just the dashboard.
What i'm trying to do is: compile the main.less with included bootstrap variables in to main.css. Then compile the dash.less using the bootstrap.less variables in to dash.css. However this will result the contents of bootstrap.less to be included again in the dash.css which i don't want because i'm already including the main.css in my html.
Has anyone ever came across this ?
After trying several methods my decision was to use a grunt task to remove the duplicate css blocks.
Found a way. I had to use import like this:
#import (reference) "bootstrap.less";
.myclass{color:#bootstrap-variable;}
.anotherclass{.classDefinedInBootstrapLessWhichUsesAVariableDefinedInVariablesLess}
Using "reference" will source the imported file but not include it.
Compiling all less files to one file will be good .But if you want to have variables of bootstrap.less in dash.less. Then there is one solution , if you see in bootstrap with less dump in bootstrap.less , component wise less files are included like -
// Core variables and mixins
#import "variables.less";
#import "mixins.less";
// Reset
#import "normalize.less";
#import "print.less";
etc.so if you want to use variables you can import '#import "variables.less"' in your 'dash.less' thats it :)
I have a bootstrap.css file which I want to compile with my custom styles from style.sass into single output file, for example - style.css.
For sass compilation I use gruntjs with grunt-contrib-sass extension. My Gruntfile.js config for sass looks like this:
sass: {
dist: {
options: {
//style: 'compressed',
style: 'expanded',
lineNumbers: true
},
files: {
'build/styles/style.css': 'src/styles/style.sass'
}
}
}
I've tried to import bootstrap.css into sass file, but instead it only generates next code in output css (which is correct behavior http://sass-lang.com/documentation/file.SASS_REFERENCE.html#import):
#import url(bootstrap.css);
.....
/*my style.sass rules*/
I even tried to list multiple files in order of concatination and processing, like in uglifier settings:
files: {
'build/styles/style.css': ['src/styles/bootstrap.css', 'src/styles/style.sass']
}
But this only adds bootstrap.css into final style.css file ignoring style.sass existence.
As I'm new in gruntjs, I can't figure out how this should be done properly.
The Grunt configuration is correct. The reason your file is not being imported is because of the way SASS is designed to work.
The SASS documentation states:
By default, it looks for a Sass file to import directly, but there are a few circumstances under which it will compile to a CSS #import rule:
If the file’s extension is .css.
If the filename begins with http://.
If the filename is a url().
If the #import has any media queries.
Since the file you are importing has a .css extension it will therefore not be imported directly but remain a standard CSS #import.
You have three options to resolve this:
Rename the included file to _bootstrap.scss. (If you don't add the underscore a bootstrap.css will be created along with your main output file which is unnecessary.)
Include the Bootstrap SCSS source as a dependency of your project and build against that. Install the Bootstrap source using Bower by typing $ bower install bootstrap-sass-official in your project root folder. (For instructions on setting up Bower see the Bower website.) Then you can replace your import above with #import 'bower_components/bootstrap-sass-official/assets/stylesheets/bootstrap';.
Use a concatenation library such as grunt-contrib-concat to combine Bootstrap.css and your main style sheet during your build process.
This first option is fine if you downloaded the bootstrap CSS file into your project manually, however, if you are including it as a dependency with npm/bower it is not ideal.
I would recommend the second option since building Bootstrap from source will not only solve your problem but allow for customization of Bootstrap variables to fit your theme rather than overwriting them with subsequent style rules as well. The only downside is that your build process might be slightly longer due to the rather large SASS build of the Bootstrap source.
I am using bootstrap with Meteor, and importing the bootstrap.less files, which is installed in the public folder, through an import command in main.less:
#import "public/bower_components/bootstrap/less/bootstrap.less";
Below it, I can start using the bootstrap mixins such as .clearfix() and text-hide() and they compile fine.
However, when I want to abstract my own less code into a separate file apply.less and import that file back into main.less, which now looks like this:
#import "public/bower_components/bootstrap/less/bootstrap.less";
#import "apply.less";
I now gets an error
=> Errors prevented startup:
While building the application:
client/less/apply.less:10:2: Less compiler error: .clearfix is undefined
This is really strange. Is this an issue with Meteor?
Another thing I found out - if I put this empty mixin definition
.clearfix(){}
at the top of my apply.less file, things will compile fine again.
Has anyone come across this issue before and figured out a workaround?
Rename your second file as apply.lessimport and import it as:
#import "apply.lessimport";
Basically, the less package looks for every file in the directory tree with a ".less" extension and compiles it to CSS individually, regardless of whether the file is being imported by another file.
When it finds a file with a ".lessimport" extension, it adds it to the list of watched files, but does not actually compile or do anything with it.
Is there anyway to import a regular CSS file with Sass's #import command? While I'm not using all of the SCSS syntax from sass, I do still enjoy it's combining/compressing features, and would like to be able to use it without renaming all of my files to *.scss
After having the same issue, I got confused with all the answers here and the comments over the repository of sass in github.
I just want to point out that as December 2014, this issue has been resolved. It is now possible to import css files directly into your sass file. The following PR in github solves the issue.
The syntax is the same as now - #import "your/path/to/the/file", without an extension after the file name. This will import your file directly. If you append *.css at the end, it will translate into the css rule #import url(...).
In case you are using some of the "fancy" new module bundlers such as webpack, you will probably need to use use ~ in the beginning of the path. So, if you want to import the following path node_modules/bootstrap/src/core.scss you would write something like #import "~bootstrap/src/core".
NOTE:
It appears this isn't working for everybody. If your interpreter is based on libsass it should be working fine (checkout this). I've tested using #import on node-sass and it's working fine. Unfortunately this works and doesn't work on some ruby instances.
This was implemented and merged starting from version 3.2 (pull #754 merged on 2 Jan 2015 for libsass, issues originaly were defined here: sass#193 #556, libsass#318).
To cut the long story short, the syntax in next:
to import (include) the raw CSS-file the syntax is **without `.css`** extension at the end (results in actual read of partial `s[ac]ss|css` and include of it inline to SCSS/SASS):
#import "path/to/file";
to import the CSS-file in a traditional way syntax goes in traditional way, **with `.css` extension** at the end (results to `#import url("path/to/file.css");` in your compiled CSS):
#import "path/to/file.css";
And it is damn good: this syntax is elegant and laconic, plus backward compatible! It works excellently with libsass and node-sass.
__
To avoid further speculations in comments, writing this explicitly: Ruby based Sass still has this feature unimplemented after 7 years of discussions. By the time of writing this answer, it's promised that in 4.0 there will be a simple way to accomplish this, probably with the help of #use. It seems there will be an implementation very soon, the new "planned" "Proposal Accepted" tag was assigned for the issue #556 and the new #use feature.
UPD: on 26 October 2020 lib-sass was deprecated, therefore issue #556 was immediately closed.
__
answer might be updated, as soon as something changes.
Looks like this is unimplemented, as of the time of this writing:
https://github.com/sass/sass/issues/193
For libsass (C/C++ implementation), import works for *.css the same way as for *.scss files - just omit the extension:
#import "path/to/file";
This will import path/to/file.css.
See this answer for further details.
See this answer for Ruby implementation (sass gem)
You must prepend an underscore to the css file to be included, and switch its extension to scss (ex: _yourfile.scss). Then you just have to call it this way:
#import "yourfile";
And it will include the contents of the file, instead of using the CSS standard #import directive.
Good news everyone, Chris Eppstein created a compass plugin with inline css import functionality:
https://github.com/chriseppstein/sass-css-importer
Now, importing a CSS file is as easy as:
#import "CSS:library/some_css_file"
If you have a .css file which you don't wish to modify, neither change its extension to .scss (e.g. this file is from a forked project you don't maintain), you can always create a symlink and then import it into your .scss.
Creates a symlink:
ln -s path/to/css/file.css path/to/sass/files/_file.scss
Imports symlink file into a target .scss:
#import "path/to/sass/files/file";
Your target output .css file is going to hold contents from imported symlink .scss file, not a CSS import rule (mentioned by #yaz with highest comment votes). And you don't have duplicated files with different extensions, what means any update made inside initial .css file immediately gets imported into your target output.
Symbolic link (also symlink or soft link) is a special type of file
that contains a reference to another file in the form of an absolute
or relative path and that affects pathname resolution.
– http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_link
You can use a third-party importer to customise #import semantics.
node-sass-import-once, which works with node-sass (for Node.js) can inline import CSS files.
Example of direct usage:
var sass = require('node-sass');,
importOnce = require('node-sass-import-once');
sass.render({
file: "input.scss",
importer: importOnce,
importOnce: {
css: true,
}
});
Example grunt-sass config:
var importOnce = require("node-sass-import-once");
grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-sass");
grunt.initConfig({
sass: {
options: {
sourceMap: true,
importer: importOnce
},
dev: {
files: {
"dist/style.css": "scss/**/*.scss"
}
}
});
Note that node-sass-import-once cannot currently import Sass partials without an explicit leading underscore. For example with the file partials/_partial.scss:
#import partials/_partial.scss succeeds
#import * partials/partial.scss fails
In general, be aware that a custom importer could change any import semantics. Read the docs before you start using it.
If I am correct css is compatible with scss so you can change the extension of a css to scss and it should continue to work. Once you change the extension you can import it and it will be included in the file.
If you don't do that sass will use the css #import which is something you don't want.
I figured out an elegant, Rails-like way to do it. First, rename your .scss file to .scss.erb, then use syntax like this (example for highlight_js-rails4 gem CSS asset):
#import "<%= asset_path("highlight_js/github") %>";
Why you can't host the file directly via SCSS:
Doing an #import in SCSS works fine for CSS files as long as you explicitly use the full path one way or another. In development mode, rails s serves assets without compiling them, so a path like this works...
#import "highlight_js/github.css";
...because the hosted path is literally /assets/highlight_js/github.css. If you right-click on the page and "view source", then click on the link for the stylesheet with the above #import, you'll see a line in there that looks like:
#import url(highlight_js/github.css);
The SCSS engine translates "highlight_js/github.css" to url(highlight_js/github.css). This will work swimmingly until you decide to try running it in production where assets are precompiled have a hash injected into the file name. The SCSS file will still resolve to a static /assets/highlight_js/github.css that was not precompiled and doesn't exist in production.
How this solution works:
Firstly, by moving the .scss file to .scss.erb, we have effectively turned the SCSS into a template for Rails. Now, whenever we use <%= ... %> template tags, the Rails template processor will replace these snippets with the output of the code (just like any other template).
Stating asset_path("highlight_js/github") in the .scss.erb file does two things:
Triggers the rake assets:precompile task to precompile the appropriate CSS file.
Generates a URL that appropriately reflects the asset regardless of the Rails environment.
This also means that the SCSS engine isn't even parsing the CSS file; it's just hosting a link to it! So there's no hokey monkey patches or gross workarounds. We're serving a CSS asset via SCSS as intended, and using a URL to said CSS asset as Rails intended. Sweet!
To import a regular CSS file into Sass:
Official Sass Documentation: Import CSS into Sass
Simple workaround:
All, or nearly all css file can be also interpreted as if it would be scss. It also enables to import them inside a block. Rename the css to scss, and import it so.
In my actual configuration I do the following:
First I copy the .css file into a temporary one, this time with .scss extension. Grunt example config:
copy: {
dev: {
files: [
{
src: "node_modules/some_module/some_precompiled.css",
dest: "target/resources/some_module_styles.scss"
}
]
}
}
Then you can import the .scss file from your parent scss (in my example, it is even imported into a block):
my-selector {
#import "target/resources/some_module_styles.scss";
...other rules...
}
Note: this could be dangerous, because it will effectively result that the css will be parsed multiple times. Check your original css for that it contains any scss-interpretable artifact (it is improbable, but if it happen, the result will be hard to debug and dangerous).
to Import css file in to scss simply use the this:
#import "src/your_file_path";
without using extension .css at the end
It is now possible using:
#import 'CSS:directory/filename.css';
I can confirm this works:
class CSSImporter < Sass::Importers::Filesystem
def extensions
super.merge('css' => :scss)
end
end
view_context = ActionView::Base.new
css = Sass::Engine.new(
template,
syntax: :scss,
cache: false,
load_paths: Rails.application.assets.paths,
read_cache: false,
filesystem_importer: CSSImporter # Relevant option,
sprockets: {
context: view_context,
environment: Rails.application.assets
}
).render
Credit to Chriss Epstein:
https://github.com/sass/sass/issues/193
Simple.
#import "path/to/file.css";