YUICompressor or similar in PHP?

Question

I've been using yuicompressor.jar on my test server for on-the-fly minimisation of changed JavaScript files. Now that I have deployed the website to the public server, I noticed that the server's policies forbid the use of exec() or its equivalents, so no more java execution for me.

Is there a decent on-the-fly JS compressor implemented in PHP? The only thing resembling this that I was able to find was Minify, but it's more of a full-blown compression solution with cache and everything. I want to keep the files separate and have the minimised files follow my own naming conventions, so Minify is a bit too complex for this purpose.

The tool, like yuicompressor, should be able to take either a filename or JavaScript as input and should either write to a file or output the compressed JavaScript.

EDIT: To clarify, I'm looking for something that does not have to be used as a standalone (i.e. it can be called from a function, rather than sniffing my GET variables). If I just wanted a compressor, Minify would obviously be a good choice.

Answer 1

Yes there is, it's called minify.

The only thing in to worry about in the way of complexity is setting up a group, and there's really nothing to it. Edit the groupsConfig.php file if you want multiple JS/CSS in one <script> or <link> statement:

return array(
     'js-common' => array('//js/jquery/jquery-1.3.2.min.js', '//js/common.js', '//js/visuals.js',
'//js/jquery/facebox.js'),
     'css-common' => array('//css/main.css', '//css/layout.css','//css/facebox.css')
);

To include the above 'js-common' group, do this:

<script type="text/javascript" src="/min/g=js-common"></script>

Answer 2

A quick search gives quite a lot of results:

• http://joliclic.free.fr/php/javascript-packer/en/
• http://www.phpclasses.org/browse/package/3158.html
• http://farhadi.ir/works/smartoptimizer
• And so on...

Answer 3

Dean Edward's Packer (online version here)

The second most popular compressor; I have found it matches or outperforms YUI in many cases (when variables are shrunk).

Answer 4

Try Lissa:

Lissa is a generic CSS and JavaScript loading utility. Lissa is an extension of the YUI PHP Loader aimed at solving one of the current loader limitations; combo loading. YUI PHP Loader ships with a combo loader that is capable of reducing HTTP requests and increasing performance by outputting all the YUI JavaScript and/or CSS requirements as a single request per resource type. Meaning even if you needed 8 YUI components which ultimately boil down to say 13 files you would still only make 2 HTTP requests; one for the CSS and another for the JavaScript. That's great, but what about custom non-YUI resources. YUI PHP Loader will load them, but it loads them as separate includes and thus they miss out on benefits of the combo service and the number of HTTP requests for the page increases. Lissa works around this limitation by using the YUI PHP Loader to handle the loading and sort of YUI and/or custom resource dependencies and pairs that functional with Minify.