Play framework auto javascript and CSS minifier

Question

Does anyone know a good play plugin that automatically minifies javascript and css to attach to a production play server?

I've found this one, but I guess there are more out there:

https://github.com/greenlaw110/play-greenscript

The main problem I see here is that the having javascript being generated from the play side, the plugin would have to detect JS code that gets generated on the fly. Mainly because I'm writing values directly into the javascript like:

function foo${handlerID}(someVar){
var x = ${some_val};

(...)
}

var t = foo${handlerID}('bar');

Answer 1

The reason we do minimizing/compressing/merging for css/js/img is because we want to save the network bandwidth and accelerate application performance, lower the server's load and make the user be more happy.

When you are putting those groovy variables into your javascript code you are shifting to the other way, i.e. making the server slowing down. Because each request will get a different javascript file to be downloaded, and the user will be no longer benefit from the local cached js copies. For the same reason using greenscript or any other minimizing tool to compress it is meaningless, because each time your need to compress and merge again instead of get it directly from cache.

If there are cases that you HAVE TO put the groovy variables into some javascript code, you'd better separate them from other parts (which should reasonably be most the majority). By doing that you could still using greenscript or press to process your static js files and leave the dynamic parts stay inside your view.

Answer 2

Check out the press module. As long as the generated Javascript and css are in their separate own respective files you should be able to minify them automatically.