Twitter Bootstrap plugin for CakePHP 3.X

This plugin includes both lessjs and less.php parsers and allows you to easilly deploy CakePHP applications with twitter bootstrap.

With a component and some helpers it automatically replaces cakePHP's elements like form inputs and flash messages to be displayed with twitter bootstrap.

It also contains bake templates that will help you starting twitter-bootstraped CakePHP webapps.

General Features

• Parses less files using less.js or less.php.
• LessHelper to easily parse files.
• FormHelper to automatically style forms.
• FlashComponent to replace alerts.
• Bake templates.

Installation

Adding the plugin

You can easily install this plugin using composer as follows:

composer require elboletaire/twbs-cake-plugin

After doing it, composer will ask you for a version. Checkout the package on packagist to know every available version.

Latest version currently is 3.0.0-beta2, but you can use dev-master to use the latest master HEAD version.

Enabling the plugin

After adding the plugin remember to load it in your config/bootstrap.php file:

Plugin::load('Bootstrap');

If, for any reason, the psr-4 addition to the composer.json file does not work, try setting autoload to true when loading the plugin:

Plugin::load('Bootstrap', ['autoload' => true]);

Configuration

After adding the plugin you can add the desired utilities:

// AppController.php
public $helpers = [
    'Bootstrap.Less',
    'Bootstrap.Form'
];

public function initialize() {
    $this->loadComponent('Bootstrap.Bootstrap');
}

Next, create a styles.less file on your webroot/less folder (also create that folder!) containing this line:

@import '/bootstrap/less/bootstrap.less';

Finally, you can use the template included with this plugin as a theme (for previewing, as it's not functional):

// AppController
public $theme = 'Bootstrap';

// or...
public $layout = 'Bootstrap.default';

You can also specify it as a layout directly from your template files:

<?php
// any .ctp template file
$this->layout = 'Bootstrap.default';
?>

Take in mind that if you're loading this plugin in a fresh CakePHP installation and you try to see the layout change in the home page, you won't see nothing. The home.ctp overwrites the layout to false, to ensure it's loaded as it has been designed.

To load less files on your templates use the LessHelper: On your template, replace your CSS link (probably $this->Html->css()) line with this one:

echo $this->Less->less('less/styles.less');

And that's it :)

Baking views

You can bake your views using the twitter bootstrap templates bundled with this plugin. To do so, simply specify the bootstrap template when baking your files:

cake bake all articles --template bootstrap

Utilities

FlashComponent

The FlashComponent replaces all flash messages set with $this->Flash to automatically load the bootstrap flash message template located at src/Template/Element/flash.ctp.

By default the flash messages will show a close button. If you want to disable just specify it as param when setting the flash message:

$this->Flash->danger('Fatal error', ['params' => ['close' => false]]);

LessHelper

Used on your template or view to load the compressed CSS.

By default it will compress files using the php parser with cache enabled. This will fill your css folder with a bunch of files starting with lessphp_ used for the cache. I recommend you adding these files to your .gitignore file in order to prevent commiting them:

lessphp_*

Basically, you give the helper a less file to be loaded (from /less directory) and it returns the html link tag to the compiled CSS:

echo $this->Less->less('less/styles.less');
// will result in something like...
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/lessphp_8e07b9484a24787e27f9d71522ba53443d18bbd2.css" />

You can compile multiple files if you pass an array:

echo $this->Less->less(['less/myreset.less', 'less/styles.less']);
// They will be compiled in the same file, so the result will be the same as the previous one
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/lessphp_e0ce907005730c33ca6ae810d15f57a4df76d330.css"/>

And you can pass any option to both lessjs and less.php parsers:

echo $this->Less->less('less/styles.less', [
    'js' => [
        // options for lessjs (will be converted to a json object)
    ],
    'parser' => [
        // options for less.php parser
    ],
    // The helper also has its own options
]);

If you want to use the less.js parser directly, instead of a fallback, or you want to use the #!watch method, you can do it so by setting the js parser to development:

echo $this->Less->less('less/styles.less', ['js' => ['env' => 'development']]);

This will output all the links to the less files and the needed js files to parse the content only using the less.js parser.

LessHelper Options

Beside the options for lessjs and less.php parsers you can set three options to the helper:

• cache: default's to true. If disabled, the output will be raw CSS wrapped with <style> tags.
• tag: default's to true. Whether or not return the code with its proper tag (with cache enabled will be a link tag, whilst without cache will be a style tag).
• less: default's to /bootstrap/js/less.min. You can use this var to set a custom lessjs file.

// Get the link to the resulting file after compressing
$css_link = $this->Less->less('less/styles.less', [
    'tag'   => false
]);

// Get the compiled CSS (raw)
$compiled_css = $this->Less->less('less/styles.less', [
    'cache' => false,
    'tag'   => false
]);

As a default setting of the LessHelper, all the CSS generated by the less.php parser is compresed. To override this set compress to false in the less.php parser options:

echo $this->Less->less('less/styles.less', [
  'parser' => ['compress' => false]
]);

FormHelper

Automatically adds some CSS classes to your form elements. Some of the input replacements can be found at src/Config/forms.php, but many need to be done directly from the FormHelper.

All the form elements' classes have been replaced with the twitter bootstrap form classes.

* Buttons always have the .btn class added. If you want to remove the class you can pass an additional btnClass param set to false to the button's $options.

Dependencies

• oyejorge/less.php version >= 1.7.0.2

Included dependencies

• twbs/bootstrap: version 3.2.0 (rev. 0140198699a41d2)
• less.js: version 1.7.5

License

Copyright 2013-2014 Òscar Casajuana (a.k.a. elboletaire)

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
imitations under the License.