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plain.tailwind

Integrate Tailwind CSS without JavaScript or npm.

Made possible by the Tailwind standalone CLI, which is installed for you.

$ plain tailwind
Usage: plain tailwind [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

  Tailwind CSS

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  compile  Compile a Tailwind CSS file
  init     Install Tailwind, create a tailwind.config.js...
  update   Update the Tailwind CSS version

Installation

Add plain.tailwind to your INSTALLED_PACKAGES:

# settings.py
INSTALLED_PACKAGES = [
    # ...
    "plain.tailwind",
]

Create a new tailwind.config.js file in your project root:

plain tailwind init

This will also create a tailwind.css file at static/src/tailwind.css where additional CSS can be added. You can customize where these files are located if you need to, but this is the default (requires STATICFILES_DIR = BASE_DIR / "static").

The src/tailwind.css file is then compiled into dist/tailwind.css by running tailwind compile:

plain tailwind compile

When you're working locally, add --watch to automatically compile as changes are made:

plain tailwind compile --watch

Then include the compiled CSS in your base template <head>:

{% tailwind_css %}

In your repo you will notice a new .plain directory that contains tailwind (the standalone CLI binary) and tailwind.version (to track the version currently installed). You should add .plain to your .gitignore file.

Updating Tailwind

This package manages the Tailwind versioning by comparing the value in your pyproject.toml to .plain/tailwind.version.

# pyproject.toml
[tool.plain.tailwind]
version = "3.4.1"

When you run tailwind compile, it will automatically check whether your local installation needs to be updated and will update it if necessary.

You can use the update command to update your project to the latest version of Tailwind:

plain tailwind update

Adding custom CSS

If you need to actually write some CSS, it should be done in app/static/src/tailwind.css.

@tailwind base;


@tailwind components;

/* Add your own "components" here */
.btn {
    @apply bg-blue-500 hover:bg-blue-700 text-white;
}

@tailwind utilities;

/* Add your own "utilities" here */
.bg-pattern-stars {
    background-image: url("/static/images/stars.png");
}

Read the Tailwind docs for more about using custom styles →

Deployment

If possible, you should add static/dist/tailwind.css to your .gitignore and run the plain tailwind compile --minify command as a part of your deployment pipeline.

When you run plain tailwind compile, it will automatically check whether the Tailwind standalone CLI has been installed, and install it if it isn't.

When using Plain on Heroku, we do this for you automatically in our Plain buildpack.

 1from .cli import compile
 2
 3
 4def run_dev_compile():
 5    # This will run by itself as a command, so it can exit()
 6    compile(["--watch"], standalone_mode=True)
 7
 8
 9def run_compile():
10    # Standalone mode prevents it from exit()ing
11    compile([], standalone_mode=False)