Using existing Bootstrap themes in Liferay (Part I).

From : https://www.liferay.com/web/juan.gonzalez/blog/-/blogs/using-existing-bootstrap-themes-in-liferay-part-i-

Yes, it's true bootstrap give us a lot of improvements for creating themes. And is also true that since Liferay 6.2 we can take advantage of all this useful tools for developing your own themes in Liferay.

Looking for developing my own themes for some personal portals (yes, I like developing in Liferay in my free time too ) without being a frontend developer seemed more less complicated. Although there were some attempts for explaining it, the steps were not clear enough for a bootstrap newbie like me.

After some investigation (and with the help from Nate Cavanaugh, Ilyan Peychev and Chema Balsas, thanks very much mates!) I could finally put all pieces together and create some steps for integrating an existing bootstrap theme into Liferay sucessfully.

So after reading this 2-part blog series you would be able to get any already developed bootstrap theme and use it in Liferay. In fact, I used some of the existing bootstrap themes showcases and generators.

As what I've seen round there, there are two types of themes from bootstrap showcases/generators:

1. Themes with downloadable LESS files.
2. Themes with complete bootstrap (v. 2.3.2) CSS.

In this post I'll be explaining the steps for the first point. So here we go!

Themes from LESS files (http://bootswatch.com/2/)

When searching for bootstrap themes, you probably found bootswatch as one of the first results. It has some free themes and many themes for purchasing. As you can see just after opening the page, you are selecting Bootstrap v.2. This is required for Liferay 6.2, as it uses Bootstrap 2.3.2. But there are good news. Next Liferay version will be compatible with Bootstrap v3, although you have to stay with v.2.3.2 until new version is out.

Just choose one of your free or purchased theme, and download the variables.less and bootswatch.less files (in my case, I've chosen "Slate" free theme):

• http://bootswatch.com/2/slate/variables.less
• http://bootswatch.com/2/slate/bootswatch.less

After downloading those files, follow these steps:

1. Create theme using Liferay IDE or SDK command line  (styled + Velocity, if using Freemarker you will find this known error: https://issues.liferay.com/browse/LPS-47408).
2. Create these new files, using _diffs directory as usual:
   1. _diffs/css/_aui_variables.scss
   2. _diffs/css/_aui_custom.scss
3. ​Copy content from variables.less into _diffs/css/_aui_variables.scss
4. Copy content from  bootswatch.less into _diffs/css/_aui_custom.scss
5. Downloaded files are in LESS format. We need to convert them to SASS. There are some rules we can follow easily:https://github.com/m5o/sass-bootstrap/blob/master/README.md#sass-conversion-quick-tips. Below I write the replacement rules I've followed, using regex patterns and the replacement value.
6. LESS replacements

   Pattern/string to replace	Replacement
   @(?!(?:import|media|charset|font-|page|((-(moz|o|ms|webkit)-)?(keyframes|viewport))))	$
   spin\(	adjust-hue(
   \.([\w-]+)(?=\()	@include $1
   #gradient > @include vertical	@include gradient-vertical
   #gradient > @include directional	@include gradient-directional
   &-	Replace with the css class where that element belongs to: (ex.:  &-inverse belongs to .navbar, so it should be .navbar-inverse)

7. Change icon path in _aui_variables.scss:

$iconSpritePath:       "../images/aui/glyphicons-halflings.png";

$iconWhiteSpritePath:  "../images/aui/glyphicons-halflings-white.png";

 

Then, after executing "ant deploy" (or using Liferay IDE) your theme should deploy properly and result, if you chose the same theme as me, should be like following:

 

 

Looks good, isn't it? As you can see, you can have a bootstrap theme as a Liferay theme in only few minutes!

That's all for now! In next blog post I'll be showing how to generate a custom bootstrap theme from scratch using some of the available generators existing in Internet, and use it as a Liferay theme.

Hope you liked it, stay tuned! 

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