How to configure Cakephp and Bootstrap-sass?

Question

I'm new to Cakephp and I have been developing a website for my client. I'm not satisfied with the look of the website and I've been trying to figure out how to use Bootstrap with Cakephp. I have been introduced to Sass and it seems like this is a great way to write css. So I want to use Bootstrap-sass. But after seraching a lot I still cannot find a good tutorial on how to approach this matter. Most of the tutorials are for Ruby on Rails with Bootstrap even the official Bootstrap-sass Github page https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap-sass

I would be gratful if someone could guide me through this or if this is not the way to go, which Bootstrap should I use If I want to have the sass functionality as well.

Also there is another doubt that I have: Is it possible to overwrite Bootstrap css without using LESS or SASS?

Answer 1

That is more than one question.

1. SASS and CakePHP, easy. First of all, understand there are 2 SASS dialects. Original SASS tries to use the minimum of characters and is indent-sensitieve like Python. SASS 3 brought SCSS, which is more like CSS on steroids and easier to use. Then - outside of Ruby - you need a SASS compiler. SCOUT for SASS - Windows and Mac - is dead simple and does the job. You indicate your source SCSS folder, sits in webroot in my CakePHP, a target folder, the CakePHP CSS folder and a temp folder sitting in CakePHP/tmp for me. That is all it takes, save a SCSS file and Scout watches this and generates the CSS.

2. Bootstrap. Not easy to integrate in CakePHP templates. Additionally it uses some questionable JavaScript. Take a look at Compass, the same thing integrated in Scout.

3. If you want Bootstrap for a responsive grid, use SimpleGrid instead. As the name says simple and CSS only. Drupal is based on it.

4. Remember SCSS is a CSS superset; copy your CSS to your SCSS folder and start adding to it.

Good luck, André Hartman, Belgium.