php-sass

Automatic SASS-to-CSS compiling (while being in development, you'll for sure not do this in production). Every time you run your app (hitting index.php for example) php-sass will automatically compile all .scss files in your scss folder to .css files in your css folder. Supports 3.2 version features of SASS (scss syntax) and mixins. Boom! You can also use Compass, but you'll add an older version of Compass's files (as the latest Compass is for SASS 3.3, not 3.2) to your scss folder manually.

Installation & Usage

In your project's composer.json, add these dependencies. If you are not using Composer, then go into the corner and be very very very ashamed of yourself. And then, after standing there for 2-3 hours, watch some tutorials on how to use Composer, it's super-easy and a common minimum-standard in PHP development these days.

Please note that this is a require-dev, not a normal require. This divides real dependencies from ones you only need for local development.

"require-dev": {
    "panique/php-sass": "1.0"
}

Install or update your Composer dependencies to add php-sass by doing composer install or composer update. Composer automatically installs everything in require-dev by default.

IMPORTANT: When you later deploy your application and don't want to install the require-dev stuff, then do composer install --no-dev (or composer update --no-dev).

In your application, add this line into your index.php (or wherever you want to compile SASS to CSS). If you use this inside common frameworks, make sure you add this before the final application call, so in Laravel add it before $app->run(); (some frameworks do stuff like exit(); or caching, so the SASS compiler would never be called).

SassCompiler::run("scss/", "css/");

The first parameter is the relative path to your scss folder (create one) and the second parameter is the relative path to your css folder. Make sure PHP can write into the css folder. For local development, a hardcore sudo chmod -R 777 public/css (when being in /var/www) is totally okay (remember, SASS compiling only happens locally, for production you'll deploy compiled .css files for sure).

To use the very latest features of SASS:

Currently php-sass fetches v0.1.1 (August 2014) of leafo/scssphp as a compiler. For latest features you might want a newer version, so have a look here https://github.com/leafo/scssphp/releases and edit the composer.json accordingly.

[optional] Good way to use it only in development, not on production

To prevent using the SASS compiler in production, use an environment switch. Nearly all framework have something like this (google for "YOURFRAMEWORK environment"). For native usage: In your Apache vhost config, add a SetEnv variable, depending on what the server is (development, testing, production, etc):

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ...
    SetEnv APPLICATION_ENV production
    ...
<VirtualHost/>

and in PHP ask for your environment like this:

if (getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') == 'development') {
    SassCompiler::run("scss/", "css/");
}

Optional features

There's an optional third parameter for SassCompiler::run() that expects one of the strings explained on http://leafo.net/scssphp/docs/#output_formatting. This defines the desired output. scss_formatter is the standard laravel-sass uses, choose scss_formatter_compressed if you need a minimized css file. scss_formatter_nested is for nested output, optimized for readability.

How @import works

The @import of sass rules from other files works perfectly. Make sure to import the files like it should be: If the file is called _colors.scss and is in the basic scss folder:

@import 'colors';

If the file is called _colors.scss and is in the subfolder modules of the basic scss folder:

@import 'modules/colors';

Read the official docs for more.

Used scripts

This tool uses the excellent scssphp SASS compiler. scssphp supports the latest SCSS syntax (3.2.12).

Other projects

• https://github.com/panique/huge
• https://github.com/panique/mini2
• https://github.com/panique/mini
• https://github.com/panique/php-long-polling
• My blog DEV METAL: http://www.dev-metal.com

License

Licensed under MIT. Totally free for private or commercial projects.

Support

If you think this script is useful, then think about supporting the project by renting your next server at Host1Plus or DigitalOcean. Thanks!