How to use all features of TailwindCSS in a Django project (not only the CDN), including a clean workflow with auto-reloading, and purgeCSS step to be production-ready?
When googling, I found a python package named django-tailwind but it did not really helped me in the process.
Create a new directory within your Django project, in which you'll install tailwindCSS like in any vanilla JS project setup:
cd your-django-folder; mkdir jstoolchain; cd jstoolchain
npm install tailwindcss postcss-cli autoprefixer
npx tailwind init
touch postcss.config.js
In this postcss.config.js file, add:
module.exports = {
plugins: [
require('tailwindcss'),
require('autoprefixer')
]
}
mkdir css; touch css/tailwind.css
In this tailwind.css file, add at least this:
@tailwind base;
@tailwind components;
@tailwind utilities;
Now, add a script in your jstoolchain/package.json file to create the build process and specify the output file, such as:
{
"scripts": {
"build": "postcss css/tailwind.css -o ../your-django-folder/your-path-to-static/css/tailwind-output.css"
}
}
Now, run;
npm run-script build
This should run without error, and tailwind-output.css should be now filled with thousands of lines. Now you can actually use tailwindCSS classes, by including the outputted css file into a Django template file along with Django's call to load the static files:
{% load static %}
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="{% static "css/tailwind-output.css" %}">
</head>
What's missing now to ease development, is to auto-reload the django development server when an HTML file is changed and saved. For this, I installed django-livereload-server.
Just follow setup instructions, this will work as expected out of the box, without any special configuration.
When you're ready to deploy, to ensure the CSS output file is not bloated with useless classes, go to jstoolchain/tailwind.config.js file, and add:
purge: {
enabled: true,
content: ['../your-django-folder/path-to-your-templates/**/*.html'],
},
Now, running build script should produce a much smaller CSS output, production-ready file.
EDIT: Tailwind 2.1 comes with an optional Just-In-Time compiler. The purge section will still be required, but you won't need to run a purge script before deploying, among many other advantages.
Take a look here for more informations
Django-Tailwind CSS is a very good package and it works well for me. Follow the docs properly and you will be fine.
Before you begin, make sure you have npm properly installed on your system
pip install django-tailwind
Alternatively, you can download or clone this repo and run pip install -e ..
Add tailwind to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py
Create a tailwind-compatible Django-app, I like to call it theme:
python manage.py tailwind init theme
Add your newly created theme app to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py
In settings.py, register tailwind app by adding the following string:
TAILWIND_APP_NAME = 'theme'
python manage.py tailwind install
python manage.py tailwind start
Django Tailwind comes with a simple base.html template that can be found under yourtailwindappname/templates/base.html. You can always extend it or delete it if you have own layout.
If you're not using base.html template provided with Django Tailwind, add styles.min.css to your own base.html template file:
You should now be able to use Tailwind CSS classes in your html.
To build a production version of CSS run:
python manage.py tailwind build
For the live reload, this handles it:
python manage.py tailwind start
For the build process, this handles it:
python manage.py tailwind build
For the PurgeCSS process, see simple sample in the docs
For NPM path configuration error (esp. on windows), see docs
A bit late, but I'v recently wrote a blog post about this, focused on replacing the Gulp and Bootstrap in Django Cookiecutter with Webpack and TailwindCSS. This is the link: https://www.boringbackend.dev/using-tailwindcss-cookiecutter-django/