.. _ref-usage:

=====
Usage
=====

Describes how to use Pipeline when it is installed and configured.

Automated generation
====================

If ``PIPELINE`` and ``PIPELINE_AUTO`` is enabled (``True``), the source files
will be automatically updated, and re-generated if needed when invoked from the
templatetags.
The last modified time of the files will be compared, and if any of the
source-files is newer than the output-file, the file will be re-generated.

Management command
==================

You can update and force updates of the compressed file(s) with the management command “synccompress”.
This makes it possible to keep the files updated manually.

The command is (assuming you are in you project-folder that contains ``manage.py``) ::

    ./manage.py synccompress

To force all files to be re-generated, use the argument ``--force`` :: 
  
    ./manage.py synccompress --force

To re-generate only a specific group ::

	./manage.py synccompress screen

To re-generate only specific groups ::

	./manage.py synccompress screen print

Templatetags
============

Pipeline includes two template tags: ``compressed_css`` and ``compressed_js``,
in a template library called ``compressed``.

They are used to output the ``<link>`` and ``<script>``-tags for the
specified CSS/JavaScript-groups (as specified in the settings).
The first argument must be the name of the CSS/JavaScript group.

The templatetags will either output the source filenames or the compressed filenames,
depending on the ``PIPELINE`` setting, if you do not specify the ``PIPELINE`` setting,
the source files will be used in DEBUG-mode, and compressed files in non-DEBUG-mode.

If you need to change the output of the HTML-tags generated from the templatetags,
this can be done by overriding the templates ``pipeline/css.html`` and ``pipeline/js.html``.

Example
-------

If you have specified the CSS-groups “screen” and “print” and a JavaScript-group
with the name “scripts”, you would use the following code to output them all ::

   {% load compressed %}
   {% compressed_css 'screen' %}
   {% compressed_css 'print' %}
   {% compressed_js 'scripts' %}


Middleware
==========

To enable HTML compression add ``pipeline.middleware.MinifyHTMLMiddleware``, 
to your ``MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES`` settings.

Ensure that it comes after any middleware which modify your HTML, like ``GZipMiddleware`` ::

   MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
      'django.middleware.gzip.GZipMiddleware',
      'pipeline.middleware.MinifyHTMLMiddleware',
   )

Cache manifest
==============

Pipeline provide a way to add your javascripts and stylesheets files to a
cache-manifest via `Manifesto <http://manifesto.readthedocs.org/>`_.

To do so, you just need to add manifesto app to your ``INSTALLED_APPS``.