A grunt task to create LessCSS @import statements from a collection of stylesheet files
npm install grunt-less-imports !npm version !npm version !37KB installed size
---
A grunt task to create LessCSS @import statements from a collection of stylesheet files.
``less`
@import (once) "filename"; // <-- these. in a file. automatically.
Why use this? To get useful error messages from the LessCSS parser, that tell you in what file the error was encountered!
LessCSS uses @import statements to aggregate files and will tell you about parsing errors in those files.
But maintaining these statements by hand is a pain. In order to automatically aggregate all the style files in a project,
a method of first concatenating the files before parsing is widely used. This works but you loose the valuable
information about where to fix your mistakes.
So, automate @import creation with this plugin and use the resulting file as the source for the LessCSS parser.
By default any .css source files are inlined in the generated file before the @import statements.
.Alternatively grunty allows to any grunt plugin as NPM script without Gruntfile.js
If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the
Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a
Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with
that process, you may install this plugin with this command:
`shell
npm install grunt-less-imports --save-dev
`--save-dev adds the plugin to your devDependencies.Once the plugin has been installed, load it in your
Gruntfile.js like so:`js
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-less-imports');
`The "less_imports" task
$3
In your project's Gruntfile, add a section named less_imports to the data object passed into grunt.initConfig().`js
grunt.initConfig({
less_imports: {
options: {
// Task-specific options go here.
},
your_target: {
// Target-specific file lists and/or options go here.
}
}
})
`$3
- options.inlineCSS
{Boolean} true
By default any .css source files are inlined in the output before the @import statements for the less files start.
LessCSS itself will generate CSS from .less @import statements, but any .css @imports are left as is. If that's the behavior
you want, set inlineCSS to false. The @imports will be created in order of the provided files.- options.banner
{String} "// This file was generated by grunt-less-imports"
This option contains the banner that is added to the beginning of the generated output file.- options.import
{String|Function} "once"
Set Less import option keyword.
String: Set the keyword for all @import statements in the task target.
Function: Dynamically set the @import keyword with a callback. The path and extension of the current file are passed as arguments. The function must return a string.
#### Examples
Basic example with options
`js
grunt.initConfig({
less_imports: {
options: {
inlineCSS: false, // default: true
import: 'reference' // default: once
},
src: [ 'styles/.css', 'styles/.less'],
dest: 'temp/imports.less'
}
})
`---
$3
#### Using 'files' shorthand notation
In this example, a
files shorthand is used to specify input files and the output file instead of src and dest.`js
grunt.initConfig({
less_imports: {
options: {
},
files: {
'dist/imports.less': ['styles/styles.css', 'styles/styles.less']
}
}
})
`#### Using multiple task targets
`js
grunt.initConfig({
less_imports: {
options: { // general task options
inlineCSS: false
},
project: {
src: [ 'styles/.css', 'styles/.less'],
dest: 'dist/project.less'
},
vendor: {
options: { // target-specific options
import: 'reference'
},
src: [ 'styles/vendor/.css', 'styles/vendor/.less'],
dest: 'dist/vendor.less'
}
}
})
`#### Example with a options.import callback
`js
grunt.initConfig({
less_imports: {
options: {
import: function(filepath, extension) {
if (filepath === 'styles/helpers.less')
return 'reference';
else
return 'once';
}
},
src: [ 'styles/.css', 'styles/.less'],
dest: 'temp/imports.less'
}
})
`Troubleshooting
Run the task with the debug and verbose options. This will give you a lot of info about what's going on.
`bash
grunt less_imports --debug --verbose
`To just run a specific task target
`bash
grunt less_imports:target-name --debug --verbose
`Debug will make grunt-less-imports print out more info, and verbose is used by grunt to be, well, really quite verbose.
Contributing
- Clone the project from https://github.com/MarcDiethelm/grunt-less-imports.git
-
npm install (no global dependencies required)
- npm test`How to contribute to a project on Github