Adding JS/CSS compression and JS validation using YUI Compressor, JSLint, and jsmin to ant script

September 13, 2007 by Mike Henke    1 Comment
Posted under: Ant

updated script – Minify CSS/JS ant revisited using YUI compressor

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I have been expanding Alistair Davidson's wonderful General ANT build and release scripts.  I added js and css minifying shown in Building Web Applications With Apache Ant along with javascript validation through jslint.

JSLint4Java "is a java wrapper around the fabulous tool by Douglas Crockford, jslint. It provides a simple interface for detecting potential problems in JavaScript code."

JSMin Ant Task -  "is a filter which removes comments and unnecessary whitespace from javascript files. It typically reduces filesize by half, resulting in faster downloads. It also encourages a more expressive programming style because it eliminates the download cost of clean, literate self-documentation."

Yahoo! UI Library – The YUI Compressor is JavaScript / CSS minifier designed to be 100% safe and yield a higher compression ratio than most other tools.

All downloads / scripts can be found in the links above.

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Basically I added three files to his root folder (build_release): jslint4java-1.1+rhino.jar, jsmin.0.0.2.jar, and yuicompressor-2.1.1.jar.

Then added this code to where he defines taskdef in his build.xml:

  <taskdef name="jsmin"
        classname="net.matthaynes.jsmin.JSMin_Task"
        classpath="jsmin.0.2.2.jar"/>
  <taskdef name="jslint"
          classname="net.happygiraffe.jslint.ant.JSLintTask"
        classpath="jslint4java-1.1+rhino.jar" />

Then in the target jarupTempDir, I added:

<!— hack till fileset is added to jslint —>
        <delete>
            <fileset dir="${tempDir}/${jarfileTstamp}">
                <include name = "**/*.js" />
                 <date datetime="${startDateTime}" when="before" />
            </fileset>
        </delete>      
       
        <echo>Run JSLintTask</echo>      
        <jslint dir="${tempDir}/${jarfileTstamp}">
        <!—
             <fileset dir="${tempDir}/${jarfileTstamp}" includes="**/*.js">
                 <date datetime="${startDateTime}" when="after" />
            </fileset>
        —>
        </jslint>
   
        <echo>Now minifying js and css files</echo>      
        <apply executable="java" parallel="false">
            <fileset dir="${tempDir}/${jarfileTstamp}" includes="**/*.js, **/*.css">
                <date datetime="${startDateTime}" when="after" />
            </fileset>
            <arg line="-jar"/>
            <arg path="yuicompressor-2.1.1.jar"/>
            <!—
            <mapper type="glob" from="*.js" to="*-min.js"/>
            —>
        </apply>

        <!—  if want to use jsmin instead of yuicompressor
        <jsmin>
              <fileset dir="${tempDir}/${jarfileTstamp}" includes="**/*.js">
            <date datetime="${startDateTime}" when="after" />
            </fileset>
        </jsmin>
        —>