doc/dev/refactoring-the-css-with-uiprops.rst
author Philippe Pepiot <philippe.pepiot@logilab.fr>
Tue, 25 Apr 2017 17:31:24 +0200
changeset 12181 29dae4b0332a
parent 10492 68c13e0c0fc5
permissions -rw-r--r--
[req] use format() instead of % substitution For readability, avoid escaping using %% and use format() instead.
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Refactoring the CSSs with UI properties
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Overview
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=========
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Managing styles progressively became difficult in CubicWeb. The
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introduction of uiprops is an attempt to fix this problem.
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The goal is to make it possible to use variables in our CSSs.
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These variables are defined or computed in the uiprops.py python file
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and inserted in the CSS using the Python string interpolation syntax.
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A quick example, put in ``uiprops.py``::
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  defaultBgColor = '#eee'
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and in your css::
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  body { background-color: %(defaultBgColor)s; }
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The good practices are:
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- define a variable in uiprops to avoid repetitions in the CSS
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  (colors, borders, fonts, etc.)
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- define a variable in uiprops when you need to compute values
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  (compute a color palette, etc.)
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The algorithm implemented in CubicWeb is the following:
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- read uiprops file while walk up the chain of cube dependencies: if
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  cube myblog depends on cube comment, the variables defined in myblog
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  will have precedence over the ones in comment
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- replace the %(varname)s in all the CSSs of all the cubes
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Keep in mind that the browser will then interpret the CSSs and apply
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the standard cascading mechanism.