I had to come up with quite a complicated setup to enable database based styling options for users. Users enter styles (like background color, font face, etc...) in the django admin backend.
I am creating a dynamic LESS file by rendering a template view as plain text view like so:
views.py:
class PlainTextView(TemplateView):
"""
Write customized settings into a special less file to overwrite the standard styling
"""
template_name = 'custom_stylesheet.txt'
def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
context = super(PlainTextView, self).get_context_data(**kwargs)
try:
#get the newest PlatformCustomizations dataset which is also activated
platform_customizations = PlatformCustomizations.objects.filter(apply_customizations=True).order_by('-updated_at')[0]
except IndexError:
platform_customizations = ''
context.update({
'platform_customizations': platform_customizations,
})
return context
def render_to_response(self, context):
return super(PlainTextView, self).render_to_response(context, content_type='plain/text')
The template custom_stylesheet.txt looks kind of like this. It takes the database styling entries the users entered in the admin backend:
@CIBaseColor: {{ dynamic_styles.ci_base_color }};
@CIBaseFont: {{ dynamic_styles.ci_base_font }};
...etc...
Now I include this dynamic less files in my main.less file with other normal static LESS files. Like so:
main.less:
@import "bootstrap_variables.less";
//this is the dynamicly created custom stylesheet out of the dynamic_styles app
@import url(http://127.0.0.1:8000/dynamic_styles/custom_stylesheet.less);
//Other styles
@import "my_styles.less";
This setup works fine. The dynamic variables out of my database get rendered into the template and LESS compiles all my less files together.
I have a problem when pushing the code to my production setup where I compile the LESS server side and compress it with django-compressor.
I get the following error:
FilterError: [31mFileError: 'http://127.0.0.1:8000/dynamic_styles/custom_stylesheet.less' wasn't found.
[39m[31m in [39m/home/application/***/media/static-collected/styles/less/main.less[90m:13:0[39m
[90m12 //this is the dynamicly created custom stylesheet out of the dynamic_styles app[39m
13 [7m[31m[1m@[22mimport url(http://127.0.0.1:8000/dynamic_styles/custom_stylesheet.less);[39m[27m
[90m14 [39m[0m
Has anybody ever experienced problems with django compressor like that? Does it have problems with dynamically created files like this? Could the absolute url be a problem?
Could you think of another solution get dynamically generated less files working with django compressor?