Autocompiling LESS to CSS using lessphp
So, you want to use LESS with automatic serverside compiling using lessphp?
Step 1: Create the LESS stylesheet
This is a sample stylesheet, I name it style.less as you see.
Step 2: Download and install lessphp
I download the compiler, lessphp, from its GitHub repository.
git clone git://github.com/leafo/lessphp.git
Here are the sources for lessphp in my sample installation.
Step 3: Create a style.php to make CSS from LESS
Now I need some PHP-code to feed lessphp with my style.less. I put everything together in style.php.
You can try it out by just accessing it, style.php, it should present the final CSS-code.
Review the sourcecode for style.php.
Do not forget to make the directory writable for the webserver, lessphp needs to be able to write the cache-file and the resulting css-file.
Step 4: Add stylesheet to the webpage
Just add the "stylesheet", style.php, as any normal stylesheet to your webpage.
<link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='style.php' />
When you are done with development, and want to make it a production environment, just change the stylesheet, change .php to .css.
<link rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' href='style.css' />
Done!
Have fun and review the sourcecode for this example to review how its working.
Or clone the whole example, including lessphp essentials, from GitHub.