Question

We let users upload their own custom css/less to our django app.

All our css/less files are compressed by django_compressor “on-the-fly”.

When the app is initially deployed all css files are moved to the collect-static directory.

When users upload custom css styles they replace one of the less files in the collect-static directory.

The problem with that is that the changes only appear when the apache is being reloaded thus a new css file gets generated by django-compressor.

Is there a way to force django-compressor to regenerate it’s compiled and cached files? I would not feel comfortable triggering a sudo services apache2 reload at django application level.

Answer 1

I used a different approach. I am now using offline compression, which is faster and better for multi server deployments anyways.

I give the user an interface to change certain css and less values. I save those css/less values in a database table, so that the user can edit the stuff easily.

To make the new css/less values available to the frontend (compiled css files) I write the values the user entered in a less file to the disk and re-run the python manage.py compress command.

This way the compiled compressor files are generated and if the user entered invalid less code, which would lead to compile errors, the compressor stops and keeps the old css files.

Here’s my save() method:

 def save(self, *args, **kwargs):

        #write the less file to the file system
        #everytime the model is saved
        try:

            file_location = os.path.join(settings.STATIC_ROOT, 'styles', 'less', 'custom_styles.less')

            with open(file_location, 'w') as f:
                f.write(render_to_string('custom_styles/custom_stylesheet_tmpl.txt', {'platform_customizations': self}))

        except IOError:
            #TODO show error message to user in admin backend and via messaging system
            raise IOError

        #re-run offline compress command in prod mode
        management.call_command('compress')


        super(PlatformCustomizations, self).save(*args, **kwargs)