grunt-django-compressor

A Grunt plugin to iterate over every html file and compress JavaScripts and StyleSheets.

Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.2

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:

npm install grunt-django-compressor --save-dev

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-django-compressor');

The "django_compressor" task

Overview

In your project's Gruntfile, add a section named django_compressor to the data object passed into grunt.initConfig().

grunt.initConfig({
    django_compressor: {
        my_app_javascript: {
            options: {
                startTag: '<!--SCRIPTS-->',
                endTag: '<!--SCRIPTS END-->',
                excludedDirs: [
                    'node_modules/'
                ]
            },
        },
    },
});

Important notes

Sample django project

There is a Django project I've created for you to see the grunt-django-compressor working and I named it superheroes_store, it's basically a super simple application which has a tipically Django structure.

You can clone it in your local machine and do some experiments with the plugin, there is a README which will show you the instructions to install and run it.

Click here to see superheroes_store on github

{{ DEBUG }} variable

{{ DEBUG }} variable is used by this grunt plugin to determine when to use uncompressed files (development) and when to use compressed files (production).

You will need to have this variable available in your template, to do that you should have a context_processor like this:

https://github.com/cristiangrojas/superheroes_store/blob/master/utils/context_processors.py

Keep in mind that you will need to have it in your TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS in the settings.py

Testing in local

To test grunt-django-compressor in your development enviroment you should set DEBUG to True in the settings.py file, then you should run the python manage.py collectstatic command.

A folder usually called "generated" (depends of your STATIC_ROOT setting) will be created in your django project folder and there will be all the statics from every application where you have an "static" folder.

You'll also need to serve static files by mapping the static url:

(
    r'^static/(?P<path>.*)$',
    'django.views.static.serve',
    {'document_root': settings.STATIC_ROOT}
),

You can see the full implementation in this file:

https://github.com/cristiangrojas/superheroes_store/blob/master/superheroes_store/urls.py

Options

startTag

Type: String Default value: <!--SCRIPTS-->

The start tag is an HTML comment to determine where starts your javascript or css importation inside an HTML template of your django project.

endTag

Type: String Default value: <!--SCRIPTS END-->

The start tag is an HTML comment to determine where starts your javascript or css importation inside an HTML template of your django project.

The startTag and endTag tags inside your template should looks something like:

...
 
<!--SCRIPTS-->
<script src="{{ STATIC_URL }}javascript/libs/jquery/jquery-1.8.3.min.js"></script>
<script src="{{ STATIC_URL }}javascript/libs/jquery-ui/jquery-ui.min.js"></script>
...
<!--SCRIPTS END-->
 
...

staticFilesPath

Type: String Default value: ''

DEPRECATED (Aug 22, 2014)

destinationFolder

Type: String Default value: []

DEPRECATED (Aug 22, 2014)

excludedDirs

Type: Array Default value: ''

An array containing folder names that should be excluded when searching HTML files inside your django project, good examples of folders you should exclude are node_modules, bower_components and folders like them.

generateJsSourceMaps

Type: Boolean Default value: true

Set to true if you want to generate source maps for your compiled js files. Source map files will have exact the same name as the javascript file with the .map extension. Will be also in the same folder (options.destinationFolder).

amazonS3BucketURL

Type: String Default value: ''

DEPRECATED (Aug 22, 2014)

Usage Examples

Custom Options

For this example let's suppose we have a Django project called "superheroes_store" and the structure should looks like the following:

superheroes_store/
├── manage.py
├── Gruntfile.js
├── package.json
├── node_modules
│   └── ...
└── superheroes_store
    ├── __init__.py
    ├── settings.py
    ├── static
    │   ├── fonts
    │   ├── img
    │   ├── js
    │   └── stylesheets
    ├── templates
    │   └── base.html
    ├── urls.py
    └── wsgi.py

Based on this structure our gruntfile should be:

grunt.initConfig({
    django_compressor: {
        superheroes_store_javascript: {
            options: {
                startTag: '<!--SCRIPTS-->',
                endTag: '<!--SCRIPTS END-->',
                excludedDirs: [
                    'node_modules/',
                ]
            }
        }
    },
});

Contributing

In lieu of a formal styleguide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint and test your code using Grunt.

Release History

v0.2.72

date: Sept 9, 2014

Changes:

• Removing old files with regexp to match also the file extension

v0.2.7

date: Sept 9, 2014

Changes:

• Replaced MD5 in the filename with a timestamp.
• Re-implemented ?version=[MD5-code]
• Fixes in documentation

v0.2.6

date: Sept 8, 2014

Changes:

• Now the MD5 hash for all found files is being added in the compressed file name to prevent errors that occurs with files with the same name that doesn't changes in the server.

v0.2.52

date: Sept 5, 2014

Changes:

• Fixed error when looking for some file in every django application static folder

v0.2.5

date: Aug 22, 2014

Changes:

• Looking for static files inside every Django app inside the project.
• Removed unneeded options: staticFilesPath, destinationFolder and amazonS3BucketUrl because with the new implementation.
• Ability to use {% static %} template tag or {{ STATIC_URL }} variable.
• Generating well formatted source maps for javascript compiled files, now amazon bucket url option is not needed because I'm always working with keeping in mind the /generated/ folder structure.

v0.2.21

date: Aug 14, 2014

Changes:

• Fixed an error with the sourceMap in json format.

v0.2.18

date: Aug 14, 2014

Changes:

• Added two new options: generateJsSourceMaps & amazonS3BucketURL. Ability to decide if the plugin should or not generate js source maps. Ability to provide Amazon S3 bucket name if the app uses this service in a production environment.

v0.2.17

date: Aug 14, 2014

Changes:

• Replaced cache version from a datetime to a MD5 (unique for each file) to prevent commits with large amount of changes when updating this plugin

v0.2.16

date: Aug 14, 2014

Changes:

• Implemented source maps for javascript minified files to be able to debug in modern browsers

v0.2.14

date: Aug 13, 2014

Changes:

• Fixed error with double django-application name in file names

v0.2.13

date: Aug 13, 2014

Changes:

• Generating unique file names based in the path of the file. Ex: ./my_django_app/templates/base.html will result in a file called my_django_app.base.js