System.Web.Optimization making function argument names stay the same for certain functions

Question

With ASP.NET Bundling with a ScriptBundle

function StartController($scope, $location, $rootScope) {}

is transformed to

function StartController(n,t,i) {}

However, as I am using AngularJs, for dependency injection to still work, the argument names must not be changed when minified. How can I ensure $scope, $location and $rootScope keep these names with the minification through a ScriptBundle, but allow argument renaming in other places?

Answer 1

This isn't something you can change on the built in bundle types, as we currently don't expose any knobs that you can tweak on the underlying transform classes. The best way to accomplish this is to write your own IBundleTransform which does minification passing in the appropriate settings to not rename variables.

I.e. something like:

public class CustomTransform : IBundleTransform {
    public void process(BundleContext context, BundleResponse response) {
         response.Content = MyMinifier.MinifyWithoutRename(response.Content);
    }
}

BundleTable.Bundles.Add(new Bundle("~/bundles/mybundle", new CustomTransform());

Answer 2

This works with System.Web.Optimizations nuget package 1.1

https://gist.github.com/zaus/7436601

(I've included a couple other concepts from along the way)

Essentially, you need to write a new BundleTransform/Minifier that exposes the CodeSettings so you can change the NoAutoRenameCollection.

Answer 3

Angular provides a way to deal with minification. If you are defining a controller you can rewrite your code as:

YOUR_APP_MODULE.controller('CONTROLLER_NAME', ['$scope', '$location', '$rootScope', function($scope, $location, $rootScope){
    // DO STUFF
}]);

On Minification, this will become:

YOUR_APP_MODULE.controller('CONTROLLER_NAME', ['$scope', '$location', '$rootScope', function(n, t, i){
}]);

You can do similar stuff with other angular components also.