How can I customise Bootstrap without losing the changes? - css

I'm using Bower to manage Bootstrap and would like to make some changes (colours, font size etc) to the default Bootstrap look and feel. Here's my workflow:
Edit bower_components/bootstrap/less/variables.less
Recompile bootstrap using grunt build
The problem is that I want to be able to upgrade bootstrap when a new version comes out and presumably I'll lose my changes to variables.less.
Is there a way I can keep my changes outside of bower_components and also avoid having bower_components in source control since it's 122MB?

you can create a variables-custom.less and import it into theme.less like this:
//
// Load core variables and mixins
// --------------------------------------------------
#import "variables.less";
//import custom-variables after variables so the values will override.
#import "custom-variables.less"; //only has variables that have changed.
#import "mixins.less";
IMO this is a little bit better than the first solution because you wont have to load two (almost) identical CSS files on the client.
I'm sorry I cant help you with what to to about Bower and your source control as I do not use Bower

Here's the solution which worked for me:
Use bower to install all UI packages e.g. bower install bootstrap chosen
Create a separate folder less which contains all the LESS modifications. This article was very helpful here.
Here's my less/styles.less file:
#import "../bower_components/bootstrap/less/bootstrap.less";
#import "../bower_components/bootstrap-chosen/bootstrap-chosen.less";
//My custom variables - overrides the bootstrap variables file
#import "variables-custom.less";
Use grunt to monitor changes within the less folder and compile them into .css
Here's my Gruntfile.js (thanks to this answer):
module.exports = function(grunt) {
grunt.initConfig({
less: {
development: {
options: {
paths: ["./less"],
yuicompress: true
},
files: {
"./static/css/styles.css": "./less/styles.less"
}
}
},
watch: {
files: "./less/*",
tasks: ["less"]
}
});
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-less');
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-watch');
};

This is indeed the best customization method. You create a theme.less and pull in original Bootstrap files (which can get upgraded in the future) and in the same file you call your own custom overrides. Either you #import them from a custom file which is not in the Bower directory or you just write your custom rules in your theme.less itself. You'll find this technique explained in this tutorial as well.
With Grunt, custom setups can get tricky. But with Brunch it's a piece of cake (yes!) and all pretty much goes automatically. Your grandma could do it.
As for avoiding the inclusion of bower_components in source control: with Git it's easy. You just check-in your bower.json but make sure to add /bower_components to your .gitignore file.

You should just create your own style sheet, use both with your custom one listed secondly. That way you can make changes but not change bootstrap at all.
Also, when you update, you keep your style sheet the same.
This allows you to change bits and pieces of Bootstrap but not actually changing the file, you're overriding it.
To be clear, your second CSS file would be SIGNIFICANTLY smaller... Only putting things your needed to change in it.

Related

Bundle sass files into single sass file

TL;DR: My question is how to bundle some of my sass files into single sass file?
I've been developing an Angular component library and I package it with ng-packagr. Let's call it #my-lib/ngx-components.
Consumers of my lib will import my components like #my-lib/ngx-components/navbar.
I decided to add theming support to components.
For example, I have a navbar component with default colors (background, text, hover etc.) I want consumers of my library to be able to override these colors with their own theme. That's why I've written a mixin which takes a $theme input and override some css rules as follows (this is a basic version of what I have)
_navbar-theme.sass
#mixin navbar-theme($theme)
$primary-color: map-get($theme, primary-color)
$secondary-color: map-get($theme, secondary-color)
$color: map-get($theme, color)
.navbar
background-color: $primary-color
color: $color
&:hover
background-color: $secondary-color
Each component has its own *-theme.sass file.
I also have global _theming.sass file which imports all of these as follows
_theming.sass
#import './components/navbar/navbar-theme'
#import './components/button/button-theme'
#import './components/dropdown/dropdown-theme'
I want to export this _theming.sass file from my lib, so people can import this file in their own sass file as #import '~#my-lib/ngx-components/theming' and start using all of the mixins available.
If they want to have custom navbar, button etc, they should be able to use those mixins with single import.
I tried to make it look like angular-material theming setup.
At first, I have tried node-sass which is already in my dependencies. But, it tries to build sass into css so it omits mixins in the output file.
Then, I looked at what angular-material has done. They use scss-bundle
I thought "this is exactly what I want." However, it requires scss files, not sass files. It cannot read sass files.
Then, I thought "Okay, I can give up on sass and start using scss. How do I convert all those files to scss without going through them by hand". Then, I found sass-convert. In this question it was said that I can use it within command line. However, when I install sass-convert with npm globally, it didn't give me a command line executable. I think I need Gulp to use it.
I've been avoding to use Gulp from the beginning, because it means another tool to learn and it adds complexity to codebase.
At this point, I feel like "Hal fixing light bulb"
TL;DR: My question is how to bundle some of my sass files into single sass file?
Also, If you can come up with a solution that requires webpack, that's fine too.
Let's through your opinion or questions:
I want to export this _theming.sass file from my lib, so people can
import this file in their own sass file as #import
'~#my-lib/ngx-components/theming' and start using all of the mixins
available. If they want to have custom navbar, button etc, they should
be able to use those mixins with single import.
You need to know, what is your target audience. Mostly people using angular cli for create their app like template scratch.
So you need provide css bundle (people just want import your css) and sass bundle (who want to use your object or your mixin).
I want to export this _theming.sass file from my lib, so people can
import this file in their own sass file as #import
'~#my-lib/ngx-components/theming' and start using all of the mixins
available. If they want to have custom navbar, button etc, they should
be able to use those mixins with single import.
I tried to make it look like angular-material theming setup.
Firstly, you need to know that #angular/material doesn't export sass (they use scss) but they export css thene compiled by scss-bundle (as you mention it) see their code and documentation theme.
I thought "this is exactly what I want." However, it requires scss
files, not sass files. It cannot read sass files.
I would like quote this answer:
Sass is a CSS pre-processor with syntax advancements. Style sheets in
the advanced syntax are processed by the program, and turned into
regular CSS style sheets. However, they do not extend the CSS standard
itself.
It is better you need transfer your code from sass to scss (by yourself), it would not much to do it (I think, I always write scss instead sass file).
Solution:
1. Provide css and sass (scss better)
When you deliver your component libs, You have to provide css and scss. Beacuse angular cli doesn't provide scss loader by default.
Don't use sass file, use scss file see my refer answer on top.
scss-bundle + webpack
Since you have to provide css, you can you webpack shell plugin to bundle scss. Scss have provide cli, if you want to use cli.
2. Structure your scss
Okay, let's take sample from bootstrap#4 module for this case. Bootstrap use structure like this (Documents):
scss
|-- _variables.scss
|-- _mixins.scss
|-- _functions.scss
|-- ...
|-- index.scss
inside index.scss will have like this:
#import 'variables'
#import 'mixins'
#import 'functions'
...
so, this scss you have to deliver beside css. Like bootstrap do, then mixin will available to consumer. Also this good approach when consumer to find scss file in scss folder (easy to pointing which is scss put in).
UPDATE
For bundle to single file you have to create task runner to do it. In your case you want to use webpack, you can create a plugin to do it.
Here example plugin:
scss-bundle-plugin.js
call to you config webpack:
plugins: [
new webpack.NoEmitOnErrorsPlugin(),
new SCSSBundlePlugin({
file: path.join(__dirname, 'src/index.scss')
})
],
To try playground, checkout hello-world-loader then:
# install dependency
npm install
# try play ground
npm run webpack
it will create file _theme.scss at ./dist.
My advice don't use webpack, use task runner instead (gulp or grunt) for this simple case. Webpack too advance and hard to write task.
There is also a widely used package, called scss-bundle.
It is quite simple to use, you just create a config file with all relevant configuration and then run scss-bundle.
This for example will use all scss files, imported in entry.scss and move it to out.scss. All imports will be resolved, except for angular themes in this example, like #import '~#angular/material/theming';.
scss-bundle.config.json:
{
"bundlerOptions": {
"entryFile": "my-project/src/entry.scss",
"outFile": "dist/out.scss",
"rootDir": "my-project/src",
"project": "../../",
"ignoreImports": [
"~#angular/.*"
],
"logLevel": "debug"
}
}
My solution for scss / sass files
I've used small module bundle-scss
It bundles files by file name mask. So you need to pass correct mask like ./src/**/*.theme.scss specify destination file and maybe your custom sort-order
You don't have to create one entry point file with all imports. bundle-scss will get all files by mask analyze all imports and include this files as well

Compile css and sass files to single css file using gruntjs

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.

Using r.js to concatenate CSS

I'm working on a project using require.js and plan to optimize it using r.js. The optimization for javascript files is built in as part of the require configration automatically.
What I would like is to split the CSS into several different files, e.g. head.css, body.css, main.css, etc. When r.js runs, it should concatenate these into a single file. The HTML would have:
<link rel=stylesheet type=text/css href=css/main.css>
A problem is that during development, the files will still be split up. I'd like to keep them split and don't want to have to redo the optimization every time -- even if it can be done automatically.
I'd also like to be able to keep the HTML with just the one stylesheet reference even in development. What would be the optimal way to do this?
There are several possibilities that I can see, each with potential problems:
Have main.css use #import to include all other CSS files.
Not automatic -- have to edit main.css for each file. That's not a big deal since the number of files will be relatively small and probably all known very early on.
r.js does not optimize this
Use require-css
This seems to be geared more towards AMD loading of CSS -- I'd rather load all the CSS up front
Same issues with automatic loading of CSS files as the other option
Create my own script that calls r.js without CSS optimization, concatenate all of the CSS files and minify appropriately.
I'm sure there's someone out there who has done this better than I will
I use grunt-contrib-cssmin which works great. You can also pass arguments to grunt, so you can have grunt:dist combine all your css and plain grunt will leave them separate.
module.exports = function (grunt) {
grunt.initConfig({
cssmin: {
add_banner: {
options: {
banner: '/* My minified css file */'
},
files: {
'dist/css/dist.min.css': ["bower_components/bootstrap/dist/css/bootstrap.css", "tmp/css/dist.css"]
}
}
}
})
}
Grunt getting started.
There is also a requirejs script for grunt. The setup looks like this:
requirejs: {
compile: {
options: {
baseUrl: "path/to/base",
mainConfigFile: "path/to/config.js",
out: "path/to/optimized.js"
}
}
}

Bootstrap Theme - variables.less - Bootswatch

How do you generate bootstrap.css file from the variables.less and bootstrap.less files from http://bootswatch.com/ ?
Compiling using lessC, I get a css file but that is way smaller than bootstrap.css. How am I supposed to change the colour in one of the themes?
Thanks a ton.
Bootswatch Swatchmaker is great and all but sometimes you are trying include Bootswatch themes in a more scriptable environment or need a better understanding of how Bootswatch themes are put together. Here is my method for manually compiling a Bootswatch Theme.
Download Twitter Bootstrap from the source and uncompress.
Move the Bootswatch files variables.less and bootswatch.less to the less/ folder, replacing the existing variables.less file.
At the end of bootstrap.less, append #import "bootswatch.less";.
Compile bootstrap.less. I recommend using the grunt task provided by Bootstrap.
Bootswatch Swatchmaker
Thomas Park, the maker and maintainer of Bootswatch, made a little kit called Swatchmaker specifically for the purposes of customizing themes from Bootswatch or creating new ones.
Check out the Swatchmaker readme in his Bootswatch repo on GitHub for more info.
Once you get that set up, just add the LESS files for the theme you want to edit to the swatch directory, editing the variables.less with your customizations.
The contents of the swatchmaker.less gives a decent summary of what it does:
#import "bootstrap/less/bootstrap.less";
#import "swatch/variables.less";
#import "swatch/bootswatch.less";
#import "bootstrap/less/utilities.less";
Then bootstrap.css is generated from lessc swatchmaker.less > bootstrap.css.
Not sure how to do this as a "supplemental" answer (#merv has already given the correct answer!), but just in case it's useful to anyone:
My problem was that I want to use just the bootstrap.less and variables.less file to generate a new theme in a way that simply used the Grunt tasks already developed in the Bootstrap distribution. I didn't want to install any Bootswatch-specific tools to compile a new theme.
I already have a modified build script that uses the core bootstrap from path /lib/bootstrap. I consider the theme to be a part of the lib as well, but I gave it its own directory: /lib/theme
Inside the theme directory, I put the two files downloaded from http://bootswatch.com -- namely, "bootswatch.less" and "variables.less". Thing is, these two files don't really "do anything" by themselves; they still rely on Bootstrap. So hooking it all up meant CREATING a third file, which I called "theme.less". The contents of theme.less are as described by #merv above:
#import "../bootstrap/less/bootstrap.less";
#import "variables.less";
#import "bootswatch.less";
#import "../bootstrap/less/utilities.less";
Your paths will be different depending on how you've structured your project. Then, in the Gruntfile.js (modified from the one included in Bootstrap), you locate the compileTheme configuration object and modify it to point to this new theme.less file:
compileTheme: {
options: {
strictMath: true,
sourceMap: true,
outputSourceFiles: true,
sourceMapURL: '<%= pkg.name %>-theme.css.map',
sourceMapFilename: 'dist/css/<%= pkg.name %>-theme.css.map'
},
src: 'lib/theme/theme.less',
dest: 'dist/css/<%= pkg.name %>-theme.css'
}
It's only the "src" line that has changed.
Now when you run > grunt dist (or any other related grunt tasks) it will pick up the theme from the new location, apply the appropriate parts of Bootstrap's included files, and produce a new theme.
Hope that's helpful to anyone. It doesn't answer the OP directly since it's a bootstrap-theme.css file rather than a bootstrap.css file, but it's more in line with what people tend to do with Bootstrap 3.2+ as of this writing. And more importantly, for those who are relative newcomers to all things LESS and Grunt, it's a fairly pain-free way to modify the build script without overwriting files in the bootstrap directory.

Import regular CSS file in SCSS file?

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";

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