A note about Laravel 4

With Laravel 4, this bundle is so easy to replicate, I'm not going to support it anymore. I'll give you a quick how-to here though, just in case.

1. Require lessphp in composer.json
2. Write some code like this (maybe in your global start file):

$less = new lessc;

// Compile a file
$less->compileFile('app/less/input.less', 'public/css/output.css');

// Compile based on modified time
$less->checkedCompile('app/less/input.less', 'public/css/output.css');

// Compile a 'snippet'
$css = $less->compile('#myElem { background-color: #f00; }');
// And then write to file?

laraveless - Automated LESS compilation for Laravel

Thanks to leafo for lessphp.

Quick Start

1. Install the bundle

    php artisan bundle:install laraveless
   

2. Add it to your application's bundles.php

    return array(
        'laraveless' => array(
        	'auto' => true,
        ),
    );
   

3. Create application/config/less.php

    return array(
        'directories' => array(
            ...
        ),
        'files' => array(
            ...
        ),
        'snippets' => array(
            ...
        ),
    );
   

4. That's it, really.

More about directories, files, and snippets

laraveless uses the directories, files, and snippets arrays to create CSS from your LESS. Here's how.

Directories

The directories array is optional. If you don't have any directories that you want compiled to LESS, you can leave it out; otherwise, you want to specify your directories in application/config/less.php as so:

return array(
	'directories' => array(
		path('app') . 'less' => path('public') . 'css',
	),
);

That will get all files matching application/less/*.less (case-insensitive, non-recursive) and compile them to CSS in the public/css directory. For example, the file application/less/test.less becomes public/css/test.css.

If you want to specify single LESS files or want to specify the output filename, use files.

Files

The files array is nearly identical to the directories array. In application/config/less.php:

return array(
	'files' => array(
		path('app') . 'less/source.less' => path('public') . 'css/destination.css',
	),
);

That will... you get it, right?... compile application/less/source.less to public/css/destination.css.

Snippets

I added snippets just because. They're probably not great practice, but maybe you'll find a use for them. Once again, in application/config/less.php:

return array(
	'snippets' => array(
		'#content { background: #f00; h1 { color: #0f0; } }' => path('public') . 'css/file.css',
	),
);

That should be pretty self-explanatory.

One final note

laraveless uses lessphp's ccompile method, which means that only source less files modified more recently than the destination css file are compiled, so you shouldn't take a performance hit.

... except for on snippets, which are compiled and written to disk every time the bundle is started.