Using PHP as CSS

February 10, 2010

So often I've wished that css had variables built in. I've finally come across the solution.

• Save your stylesheet as .php
• Call the stylesheet as usual
  <link ... href="styles.php">
• At the top of styles.php, in a php block, put
  header('Content-Type: text/css');
• Do cool stuff:

<?php $brightCol = '#cc0000'; ?>
div.foo {
  background: <?php echo $brightCol; ?>;
}

This is better than just putting the server generated styles on the page, because the browser caches an external stylesheet, but will need to read styles on the page each time the page is loaded.

Like this? Let me know; it makes me happy.