Settings & Configuration

Settings

The package can be configured by a few settings, which can be overwritten in the settings.py of your project.

TAILWIND_CLI_VERSION

Default: "3.4.3"

This defines the version of the CLI and of Tailwind CSS you want to use in your project.

TAILWIND_CLI_PATH

Default: "~/.local/bin/"

The path where to store CLI binary on your machine or the path to an manually installed binary.

The default behaviour is, that TAILWIND_CLI_PATH should point to a directory, where django-tailwind-cli is allowed to download the official CLI to. Normally, this library tries to manage the tailwind CLI by itself and don't rely on externally installed versions of it.

Starting with version 2.7.0 TAILWIND_CLI_PATH can also point to an existing binary, in case you want to install it using some package manager or if you have installed tailwindcss globally with npm along with some plugins you want to use.

Warning

If you use the new option from 2.7.0 but haven't installed a binary before running any of the management commands, these commands will treat the configured path as a directory and create it, if it is missing. Afterwards the official CLI will be downloaded to this path.

In case you want to use the new behaviour, it is highly recommended to also set the new setting TAILWIND_CLI_AUTOMATIC_DOWNLOAD to False.

TAILWIND_CLI_AUTOMATIC_DOWNLOAD

Default: True

Enable or disable the automatic downloading of the official CLI to your machine.

TAILWIND_CLI_SRC_CSS

Default: None

The name of the optional input file for the Tailwind CLI, where all the directivces and custom styles are defined. This is where you add your own definitions for the different layers.

If you don't define this setting, the default of the Tailwind CLI is used.

TAILWIND_CLI_DIST_CSS

Default: "css/tailwind.css"

The name of the output file. This file is stored relative to the first element of the STATICFILES_DIRS array.

TAILWIND_CLI_CONFIG_FILE

Default: "tailwind.config.js"

The name of the Tailwind CLI config file. The file is stored relative to the BASE_DIR defined in your settings.

tailwind.config.js

If you don't create a tailwind.config.js file yourself, the management commands will create a sane default for you inside the BASE_DIR of your project. The default activates all the official plugins for Tailwind CSS and adds a minimal plugin to support some variants for HTMX.

Default version

tailwind.config.js

/** @type {import('tailwindcss').Config} */
const plugin = require("tailwindcss/plugin");

module.exports = {
  content: ["./templates/**/*.html", "**/templates/**/*.html"],
  theme: {
    extend: {},
  },
  plugins: [
    require("@tailwindcss/typography"),
    require("@tailwindcss/forms"),
    require("@tailwindcss/aspect-ratio"),
    require("@tailwindcss/container-queries"),
    plugin(function ({ addVariant }) {
      addVariant("htmx-settling", ["&.htmx-settling", ".htmx-settling &"]);
      addVariant("htmx-request", ["&.htmx-request", ".htmx-request &"]);
      addVariant("htmx-swapping", ["&.htmx-swapping", ".htmx-swapping &"]);
      addVariant("htmx-added", ["&.htmx-added", ".htmx-added &"]);
    }),
  ],
};

Fancier version of tailwind.config.js

This configuration also embraces the nice trick authored by Carlton Gibson in his post Using Django’s template loaders to configure Tailwind¶. The implementation adopts Carlton's implementation to honor the conventions of this project. If you put your tailwind.config.js in a different location than your BASE_DIR, you have to change this file too.

This configuration uses the management command tailwind list_templates, which list all the templates files inside your project.

Editor Integration besides VS Code

The following default configuration tries to be as smart as possible to find all the templates inside your project and installed dependencies. This works like a charm when you run the debug server using python manage.py tailwind runserver. It also works if you start VSCode with code . from within the active virtual environment.

But it does not work with Sublime Text and the lsp-tailwindcss package or with the various LSP packages for (neo)vim. The reason is, that these intergrations not honoring the active virtual environment when being started. If you have an idea to solve this, patches are welcome.

With editors besides VS Code please use the default config.

tailwind.config.js

/** @type {import('tailwindcss').Config} */
const plugin = require("tailwindcss/plugin");
const { spawnSync } = require("child_process");

// Calls Django to fetch template files
const getTemplateFiles = () => {
  const command = "python3";
  const args = ["manage.py", "tailwind", "list_templates"];
  // Assumes tailwind.config.js is located in the BASE_DIR of your Django project.
  const options = { cwd: __dirname };

  const result = spawnSync(command, args, options);

  if (result.error) {
    throw result.error;
  }

  if (result.status !== 0) {
    console.log(result.stdout.toString(), result.stderr.toString());
    throw new Error(
      `Django management command exited with code ${result.status}`
    );
  }

  const templateFiles = result.stdout
    .toString()
    .split("\n")
    .map((file) => file.trim())
    .filter(function (e) {
      return e;
    }); // Remove empty strings, including last empty line.
  return templateFiles;
};

module.exports = {
  content: [].concat(getTemplateFiles()),
  theme: {
    extend: {},
  },
  plugins: [
    require("@tailwindcss/typography"),
    require("@tailwindcss/forms"),
    require("@tailwindcss/aspect-ratio"),
    require("@tailwindcss/container-queries"),
    plugin(function ({ addVariant }) {
      addVariant("htmx-settling", ["&.htmx-settling", ".htmx-settling &"]);
      addVariant("htmx-request", ["&.htmx-request", ".htmx-request &"]);
      addVariant("htmx-swapping", ["&.htmx-swapping", ".htmx-swapping &"]);
      addVariant("htmx-added", ["&.htmx-added", ".htmx-added &"]);
    }),
  ],
};