How to namespace Twitter Bootstrap so styles don't conflict

Andrew picture Andrew · Dec 20, 2012 · Viewed 50.7k times · Source

I want to use Twitter Bootstrap, but only on specific elements, so I need to figure out a way to prefix all Twitter Bootstrap classes with my prefix, or use the less mixins. I'm not experienced with this yet so I don't quite understand how to do this. Here's an example of the HTML that I'm trying to style:

<div class="normal-styles">
  <h1>dont style this with bootstrap</h1>
  <div class="bootstrap-styles">
    <h1>use bootstrap</h1>
  </div>
</div>

In this example, Twitter Bootstrap would normal style both h1s, but I want to be more selective about which areas I apply the Twitter Bootstrap styles.

Answer

Andrew picture Andrew · Dec 20, 2012

This turned out to be easier than I thought. Both Less and Sass support namespacing (using the same syntax even). When you include bootstrap, you can do so within a selector to namespace it:

.bootstrap-styles {
  @import 'bootstrap';
}

Update: For newer versions of LESS, here's how to do it:

.bootstrap-styles {
  @import (less) url("bootstrap.css");
}

A similar question was answered here.