Minify .js files during Maven builds

Minifying files for use on the web is essential to improving performance, to reduce network overhead as well as a slight bump in execution speed.

Long ago I used the YUICompressor plugin for both JS as well as CSS files, unfortunately that project appears to have been abandoned many years ago and no longer functions well for JS files that make use of modern features.

For JS files, I’ve found that most capabilities can be replicated with the following in the pom.xml:

<plugin>
<groupId>com.github.blutorange</groupId>
<artifactId>closure-compiler-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.21.0</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>default-minify-js</id>
<phase>generate-resources</phase>
<configuration>
<!-- not supported (always uses .min) <suffix>-min</suffix> -->
<encoding>UTF-8</encoding>
<baseSourceDir>${basedir}/${webapp-folder}</baseSourceDir>
<baseTargetDir>${webapp.path}/</baseTargetDir>
<sourceDir>js</sourceDir>
<targetDir>js</targetDir>
<skipMerge>true</skipMerge>
<includes>
<include>**/*.js</include>
</includes>
<excludes>
<exclude>**/webjars-requirejs.js</exclude>
<exclude>**/bootstrap*.*</exclude>
<exclude>**/jasmine*.*</exclude>
<exclude>**/*-min.js</exclude>
<exclude>**/*.min.js</exclude>
</excludes>
</configuration>
<goals>
<goal>minify</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>

NOTE: the only feature I have not yet been able to match is the suffix, as it appears to always use *.min.js (where I used to prefer *-min.js).

An additional advantage of using the plugin is that many common syntax errors will be identified at build time, before they cause user problems… but they will also break your build!

REFERENCES:

Minify .css files during Maven builds

Minifying files for use on the web is essential to improving performance, to reduce network overhead as well as a slight bump in execution speed.

Long ago I used the YUICompressor plugin for both JS as well as CSS files, unfortunately that project appears to have been abandoned many years ago but is still effective for CSS even if it is less useful for modern JS.

NOTE: default extension uses -min, to change it set property ‘maven.yuicompressor.suffix’ to the desired value, such as .min to match GCC used for JS.

For CSS files, you can use following in the pom.xml (JS is also possible if you are not using ES6 features):

<plugin>
<groupId>net.alchim31.maven</groupId>
<artifactId>yuicompressor-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.5.1</version>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>compressyui-min</id>
<phase>prepare-package</phase>
<goals>
<goal>jslint</goal>
<goal>compress</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
<configuration>
<nosuffix>false</nosuffix><!-- false will create -min versions, true does not -->
<warSourceDirectory>${basedir}/${webapp-folder}</warSourceDirectory>
<webappDirectory>${webapp.path}/</webappDirectory>
<jswarn>false</jswarn>
<gzip>false</gzip><!-- create .min.gz files -->
<nocompress>false</nocompress>
<force>true</force>
<excludes>
<exclude>**/*.js</exclude><!-- YUI cannot handle ES6 const let, use closure-compiler instead -->
<exclude>${webjars-output.path}*.*</exclude>
<exclude>**/webjars-requirejs.js</exclude>
<exclude>**/bootstrap*.*</exclude>
<exclude>**/jasmine*.*</exclude>
<exclude>**/*-min.css</exclude>
<exclude>**/*.min.css</exclude>
</excludes>
</configuration>
</plugin>

REFERENCES:

Install Google mod_pagespeed for Apache HTTP

Website network performance is usually a very complicated process. Over the years, I’ve outlined many development techniques that can be used toward this goal. I’d heard about mod_pagespeed for some time, but never had the opportunity to experiment with it until recently. My first impression is that it is a VERY EASY means to gain performance improvements without reworking your existing website to implement techniques for establishing far-future expires, cache-busting, minification and static file merging.

Out of the box, most common techniques are automatically applied to your assets and a local server cache is created to utilize them.

Default installation is trivial:

  1. Download the latest version for your server architecture:

    wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/dl/linux/direct/mod-pagespeed-stable_current_amd64.deb

    OR

    wget https://dl-ssl.google.com/dl/linux/direct/mod-pagespeed-stable_current_i386.deb

  2. sudo dpkg -i mod-pagespeed-*.deb

  3. sudo apt-get -f install
    (if required)

  4. sudo service apache2 restart

NOTE: Using tools like Firebug will enable you to see an HTTP Header indicating the version being used for your requests.

If you need to modify configuration from the default:

sudo vi /etc/apache2/mods-available/pagespeed.conf

For VirtualDomains, you can selectively enable and disable PageSpeed and many of it’s settings in your appropriate configuration files with:

<IfModule pagespeed_module>
ModPagespeed on
</IfModule>

NOTE: Appending ?ModPagespeed=off to your URL will disable functions for that request.

REFERENCES: