express-compiless

express-compiless

Middleware that compiles less to css on-the-fly. Intended to be used in a development setting with the connect.static middleware, but should work with any middleware further down the stack, even an http proxy.

The response will be rewritten under these circumstances:

• If the response is served with a Content-Type of text/less.
• If the request url ends in .less (excluding GET parameters) and the Content-Type is application/octet-stream (this is what Connect's static middleware does.

Compiless plays nice with conditional GET. If the original response has an ETag, compiless will add to it so the ETag of the compiled response never clashes with the original ETag. That prevents the middleware issuing the original response to be confused into sending a false positive 304 Not Modified if compiless is turned off or removed from the stack later.

Installation

Make sure you have node.js and npm installed, then run:

npm install express-compiless

Example usage

var express = require('express'),
    compiless = require('express-compiless'),
    root = '/path/to/my/static/files';

express.createServer()
    .use(compiless({root: root}))
    .use(express.static(root))
    .listen(1337, done);

License

3-clause BSD license -- see the LICENSE file for details.

Changelog

v0.0.6

• Release 0.0.6. (Andreas Lind Petersen)
• Output the urls of the @import'ed less assets in a .compiless {src: url(...);} rule so it's valid CSS that can be read through document.styleSheets. (Andreas Lind Petersen)
• flattenLessText: Remove comments before looking for @imports. (Andreas Lind Petersen)
• More README. (Andreas Lind Petersen)
• Explicitly require the Content-Type to be application/octet-stream when compiling the body on the basis that the url ends in .less (as stated in the README). (Andreas Lind Petersen)
• +4 more