Using LESS with node.js

If you're using expressjs you can install

npm install less-middleware

and then in your application (app.js)

var lessMiddleware = require('less-middleware');

then you have to tell expressjs to use less-middleware by doing

app.configure(function(){  //other configuration here...  app.use(lessMiddleware({    src      : __dirname + "/public",    compress : true  }));  app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));});

now in your [appname]/public/stylesheets/custom.less

gets translated into regular css custom.css

If you're using express 4.x and less-middleware 0.2.x beta (which is the latest at the moment), the syntax is a bit different.

This is the same:

$ npm install less-middleware

But the middleware has a source and three option parameters:

function(source, options, parserOptions, compilerOptions)

Example:

app.use(require('less-middleware')(    __dirname + 'public/style/less', // source    { dest: __dirname + 'public/style/css' }, // options    {}, // parser    { compress: 'auto' } // complier));app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public'));

The complier's auto compress is really nice, style.css will result in an uncompressed and style.min.css will give you a compressed file.

For more info you should check out the Migration guide and the source code here: https://github.com/emberfeather/less.js-middleware