Django LESS

Django LESS provides template tags to compile LESS into CSS from templates. It works with both inline code and extenal files.

Installation

1. Add "less" to INSTALLED_APPS setting.
2. Make sure that you have lessc executable installed. See LESS official site for details.
3. Optionally, you can specify the full path to lessc executable with LESS_EXECUTABLE setting. By default it's set to lessc.
4. In case you use Django’s staticfiles contrib app you have to add django-less’s file finder to the STATICFILES_FINDERS setting, for example :

STATICFILES_FINDERS = (
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.FileSystemFinder',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles.finders.AppDirectoriesFinder',
    # other finders..
    'less.finders.LessFinder',
)

Example Usage

Inline

{% load less %}

<style>
  {% inlineless %}
    #header {
      h1 {
        font-size: 26px;
        font-weight: bold;
      }
      p { font-size: 12px;
        a { text-decoration: none;
          &:hover { border-width: 1px }
        }
      }
    }
  {% endless %}
</style>

renders to

<style>
  #header h1 {
    font-size: 26px;
    font-weight: bold;
  }
  #header p {
    font-size: 12px;
  }
  #header p a {
    text-decoration: none;
  }
  #header p a:hover {
    border-width: 1px;
  }
</style>

External file

{% load less %}

<link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ STATIC_URL}}{% less "path/to/styles.less" %}" />

renders to

<link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/LESS_CACHE/path/to/styles-91ce1f66f583.css" />

Note that by default compiled files are saved into LESS_CACHE folder under your STATIC_ROOT (or MEDIA_ROOT if you have no STATIC_ROOT in your settings). You can change this folder with LESS_ROOT and LESS_OUTPUT_DIR settings.

Note that all relative URLs in your stylesheet are converted to absolute URLs using your STATIC_URL setting.

Settings

LESS_EXECUTABLE

Path to LESS compiler executable. Default: "lessc".

LESS_ROOT

Controls the absolute file path that compiled files will be written to. Default: STATIC_ROOT.

LESS_OUTPUT_DIR

Controls the directory inside LESS_ROOT that compiled files will be written to. Default: "LESS_CACHE".

LESS_USE_CACHE

Whether to use cache for inline styles. Default: True.

LESS_CACHE_TIMEOUT

Cache timeout for inline styles (in seconds). Default: 30 days.

LESS_MTIME_DELAY

Cache timeout for reading the modification time of external stylesheets (in seconds). Default: 10 seconds.