combinator Wiki Rss Feed

Updated Wiki: Documentation

Piedone — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 08:48:20 GMT

Documentation

Installation

The module is dependent on the Helpful Libraries module, so make sure to install it first!
Combinator needs at least Orchard 1.5!

The module's admin settings

After installation the module adds a settings page to the Settings menu. You can also empty the cache there.
Note: Currently the module preserves a combined resource forever, without updating it if the resources have changed. If you have modified a stylesheet or javascript file (or its resource's settings, like conditions) and want to see the updates you should empty the cache. If the list of resource for a specific page changes, however (e.g. from Script1.js, Script2.js to include Script3.js too), Combinator will produce a new resource.

Exclusion filters and why they matter

You can set exclusion filters (regular expressions) on combination, minification and image embedding.

Sometimes a resource does not play well with combination: e.g. WYSIWYG editors (like TinyMCE) tend to load scripts on the fly, based on relative paths to the script's location. Combinator can do nothing with such mechanisms, so it's better not to touch them: therefore, excluding from combination is the way to go.
Javascript minification is not bullet-proof, there are rare cases (mostly with already minified scripts) when the produced script is syntactically incorrect. To overcome this, you can exclude such scripts from minification.
Excluding stylesheets from embedding their images is useful for conditional stylesheets specifically targeted at browsers that don't support data urls.

Development best practices

Don't have Combinator always enabled in your development (and testing) environment, as combined resources make it harder to find bugs in resources. Only enable Combinator steadily in the live environment.
You should, however, always test the impact of the module on your site. Try all pages where distinct sets of resources are used.
When testing in the development environment, don't have Shape Tracing enabled.
Always empty the cache in the live environment when you push resource changes to it.
Unless you adjust the urls to be the same, you can't push combined resources to the live environment (since Combinator adjusts relative paths, these will include the url of your development environment; however if you don't have AppPath set you should be able to publish to live, but if you have one, like the default "OrchardLocal", resources should be recompiled in live). Therefore, it's best to publish changes with the cache emptied and let combination happen on the live site (which will only cause a performance impact on the first views of pages with unique set of resources).

Troubleshooting

If something fails, Combinator returns the original set of resources for a specific resource type (like head scripts) or even for all resources, depending on the type of failure. So if looking at the html source you see that nothing has changed then something has gone wrong. Possible causes are that a local or remote resource was not found or an exclusion regex was erroneous. Take a look at the log file to see what happened. If you're in doubt what have caused the failure, don't be afraid to ask.

Who's using it?

Among others Combinator speeds up the Orchard Gallery, the Hungarian Orchard Community site and the Associativy home page. If you use and like Combinator, let me know and your site will be listed here.

Many thanks

To randompete, Sebastien Ros (for the incredible overridden stylesheet discovery) and Znowman for their valuable contributions!

See the Version history

Updated Wiki: Version history

Piedone — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 22:32:00 GMT

Version history

v2.0a5 (20.09.2012):
- Ability to set custom resource domain (work item #37)
- Ability to exclude images from sprite generation also with adding the .no-sprite css class to the selectors
v2.0a4 (18.09.2012):
- Exposing resource processing events: this way e.g. a LESS compiler can be plugged into Combinator, so compiled stylesheets are still processed (combined and minified)
- Better CSS processing with a real CSS parser (ExCSS)
v2.0a3 (28.07.2012):
- Fixing that images in the result could be mixed up
- Refactoring
v2.0a2 (26.07.2012): Fixing exceptions when there were no images to generate a sprite from
v2.0a (26.07.2012): Partial image sprite generation support on the base of Sprite Generator: http://spritegenerator.codeplex.com/
v1.4 (26.07.2012):
- Safer exception handling
- Updated Yui Compressor library
- Big refactoring of inner resource handling; now all the local urls are displayed as relative urls and all the remote ones are displayed as protocol-relative urls
- Regex config fields now can be unlimitedly long
v1.3.3 (17.05.2012): Fixing migrations
v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Maintenance release
v1.3.1 (23.03.2012):
- Fixing exception when excluded resource was the last one
- Robust cache clearing
- New names for combined resource entries
v1.3 (02.03.2012):
- Option to enable also for the admin site
- Locking caching (so cache no race conditions can occur even in multi-server environments)
- Refactoring and event handlers
v1.2 (11.02.2012):
- Resource sets feature
- Relative urls for local resources (http/https no longer a problem)
- Browser cache busting when resources are updated
- Settings import/export
- Updated YUI compressor
- Uninstall migration
- Smaller fixes
v1.1.1 (16.12.2011): combination exclusion works how it makes sense (exclusion means the file is not processed in any way), smaller improvements
v1.1 (14.12.2011):
- Images can be embedded as data urls
- Resources excluded from combination can still be minified
- Smarter path handling and relative url adjustment
- Better structured settings form
- Smarter detection of CDN resources
- Improved codebase, refactoring and smaller bugfixes
- Tested with new unit test suite
v1.0 (05.12.2011):
- Seamless combination of overridden stylesheets (thanks to Sebastien Ros for his contribution!)
- Improved relative (image) path processing
- Improved handling of CDN resources (now their url is stored, together with their settings)
- Conditional resources can be also minified (and combined if multiple with the same condition follow each other)
- Improved caching: after the first page view with a set of resources the module practically has no impact on performance
- Reverting combined file storage back to IStorageProvider, so with a custom provider the module works in a cloud hosting environment too
- Exclusion regex for combination too
- Vastly refactored, improved code
v0.8.1 (26.11.2011): Fixing bug with relative image paths
v0.8 (11.11.2011):
- Minification of resources
- Big refactoring
- Several bugfixes
v0.7 (30.10.2011):
- Fixing bug with only converting relative image urls to absolute ones
- Added in-memory caching so after initialization the DB is not touched
v0.6.7 (27.10.2011): Bugfix (visiting admin area with lowercase url bypasses admin page check)
v0.6.6 (23.10.2011): Quick bugfix of relative image paths.
v0.6.5 (23.10.2011):
- Combined resources now stored in module folder
- Faster retrieving of local resources
- Bugfixes
v0.6 (19.10.2011): Bugfixes and partial support for overridden resources.
v0.5 (10.10.2011): First public release

Updated Wiki: Version history

Piedone — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 22:31:21 GMT

Version history

v2.0a5 (20.09.2012):
- Ability to set custom resource domain (work item #37)
- Ability to exclude images from sprite generation also with adding the .no-sprite css class to the selectors
v2.0a4 (18.09.2012):
- Exposing resource processing events: this way e.g. a LESS compiler can be plugged into Combinator, so compiled stylesheets are still processed (combined and minified)
- Better CSS processing with a real CSS parser (ExCSS)
v2.0a3 (28.07.2012):
- Fixing that images in the result could be mixed up
- Refactoring
v2.0a2 (26.07.2012): Fixing exceptions when there were no images to generate a sprite from
v2.0a (26.07.2012): Partial image sprite generation support on the base of Sprite Generator: http://spritegenerator.codeplex.com/
v1.4 (26.07.2012):
- Safer exception handling
- Updated Yui Compressor library
- Big refactoring of inner resource handling; now all the local urls are displayed as relative urls and all the remote ones are displayed as protocol-relative urls
- Regex config fields now can be unlimitedly long
v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Fixing migrations
v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Maintenance release
v1.3.1 (23.03.2012):
- Fixing exception when excluded resource was the last one
- Robust cache clearing
- New names for combined resource entries
v1.3 (02.03.2012):
- Option to enable also for the admin site
- Locking caching (so cache no race conditions can occur even in multi-server environments)
- Refactoring and event handlers
v1.2 (11.02.2012):
- Resource sets feature
- Relative urls for local resources (http/https no longer a problem)
- Browser cache busting when resources are updated
- Settings import/export
- Updated YUI compressor
- Uninstall migration
- Smaller fixes
v1.1.1 (16.12.2011): combination exclusion works how it makes sense (exclusion means the file is not processed in any way), smaller improvements
v1.1 (14.12.2011):
- Images can be embedded as data urls
- Resources excluded from combination can still be minified
- Smarter path handling and relative url adjustment
- Better structured settings form
- Smarter detection of CDN resources
- Improved codebase, refactoring and smaller bugfixes
- Tested with new unit test suite
v1.0 (05.12.2011):
- Seamless combination of overridden stylesheets (thanks to Sebastien Ros for his contribution!)
- Improved relative (image) path processing
- Improved handling of CDN resources (now their url is stored, together with their settings)
- Conditional resources can be also minified (and combined if multiple with the same condition follow each other)
- Improved caching: after the first page view with a set of resources the module practically has no impact on performance
- Reverting combined file storage back to IStorageProvider, so with a custom provider the module works in a cloud hosting environment too
- Exclusion regex for combination too
- Vastly refactored, improved code
v0.8.1 (26.11.2011): Fixing bug with relative image paths
v0.8 (11.11.2011):
- Minification of resources
- Big refactoring
- Several bugfixes
v0.7 (30.10.2011):
- Fixing bug with only converting relative image urls to absolute ones
- Added in-memory caching so after initialization the DB is not touched
v0.6.7 (27.10.2011): Bugfix (visiting admin area with lowercase url bypasses admin page check)
v0.6.6 (23.10.2011): Quick bugfix of relative image paths.
v0.6.5 (23.10.2011):
- Combined resources now stored in module folder
- Faster retrieving of local resources
- Bugfixes
v0.6 (19.10.2011): Bugfixes and partial support for overridden resources.
v0.5 (10.10.2011): First public release

Updated Wiki: Version history

Piedone — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 22:31:12 GMT

Version history

v2.0a5 (20.09.2012):
- Ability to set custom resource domain (work item #37)
- Ability to exclude images from sprite generation also with adding the .no-sprite

css class to the selectors

v2.0a4 (18.09.2012):
- Exposing resource processing events: this way e.g. a LESS compiler can be plugged into Combinator, so compiled stylesheets are still processed (combined and minified)
- Better CSS processing with a real CSS parser (ExCSS)
v2.0a3 (28.07.2012):
- Fixing that images in the result could be mixed up
- Refactoring
v2.0a2 (26.07.2012): Fixing exceptions when there were no images to generate a sprite from
v2.0a (26.07.2012): Partial image sprite generation support on the base of Sprite Generator: http://spritegenerator.codeplex.com/
v1.4 (26.07.2012):
- Safer exception handling
- Updated Yui Compressor library
- Big refactoring of inner resource handling; now all the local urls are displayed as relative urls and all the remote ones are displayed as protocol-relative urls
- Regex config fields now can be unlimitedly long
v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Fixing migrations
v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Maintenance release
v1.3.1 (23.03.2012):
- Fixing exception when excluded resource was the last one
- Robust cache clearing
- New names for combined resource entries
v1.3 (02.03.2012):
- Option to enable also for the admin site
- Locking caching (so cache no race conditions can occur even in multi-server environments)
- Refactoring and event handlers
v1.2 (11.02.2012):
- Resource sets feature
- Relative urls for local resources (http/https no longer a problem)
- Browser cache busting when resources are updated
- Settings import/export
- Updated YUI compressor
- Uninstall migration
- Smaller fixes
v1.1.1 (16.12.2011): combination exclusion works how it makes sense (exclusion means the file is not processed in any way), smaller improvements
v1.1 (14.12.2011):
- Images can be embedded as data urls
- Resources excluded from combination can still be minified
- Smarter path handling and relative url adjustment
- Better structured settings form
- Smarter detection of CDN resources
- Improved codebase, refactoring and smaller bugfixes
- Tested with new unit test suite
v1.0 (05.12.2011):
- Seamless combination of overridden stylesheets (thanks to Sebastien Ros for his contribution!)
- Improved relative (image) path processing
- Improved handling of CDN resources (now their url is stored, together with their settings)
- Conditional resources can be also minified (and combined if multiple with the same condition follow each other)
- Improved caching: after the first page view with a set of resources the module practically has no impact on performance
- Reverting combined file storage back to IStorageProvider, so with a custom provider the module works in a cloud hosting environment too
- Exclusion regex for combination too
- Vastly refactored, improved code
v0.8.1 (26.11.2011): Fixing bug with relative image paths
v0.8 (11.11.2011):
- Minification of resources
- Big refactoring
- Several bugfixes
v0.7 (30.10.2011):
- Fixing bug with only converting relative image urls to absolute ones
- Added in-memory caching so after initialization the DB is not touched
v0.6.7 (27.10.2011): Bugfix (visiting admin area with lowercase url bypasses admin page check)
v0.6.6 (23.10.2011): Quick bugfix of relative image paths.
v0.6.5 (23.10.2011):
- Combined resources now stored in module folder
- Faster retrieving of local resources
- Bugfixes
v0.6 (19.10.2011): Bugfixes and partial support for overridden resources.
v0.5 (10.10.2011): First public release

Updated Wiki: Home

Piedone — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 19:56:29 GMT

Project Description
An Orchard CMS module that combines and minifies external stylesheets and javascript files to cut down on load times.

Features

Combines and minifies css files
Combines and minifies javascript files
If local and remote resources are mixed (like a local js files with one from a CDN) preserves their original order
Preserves conditional resources and minifies (if multiple with the same condition are after each other, also combines) them
Can combine remote (CDN) resources
Can embed images into stylesheets as data urls
2.0 alpha versions have partial support for image sprite generation
Resource sets can be defined for better client-side caching
Busts browser cache when resources are updated
Tuned to be fast
With custom IStorageProvider can work in cloud hosting too (if there is no write access to the Media folder anyway)
Import/export settings
Administration page:
- Adjust combination exclusion filter
- Enable/disable combination of CDN resources
- Enable/disable minification and adjust exclusion filter
- Enable/disable image embedding and adjust exclusion filter
- Define resource sets
- Enable/disable for admin site
- Empty cache

You can download an install the module from the Orchard Gallery.
For known issues and future plans please see the Issue Tracker.
Please make sure to read the Documentation!

Bug reports, feature requests and comments are warmly welcome!

Updated Wiki: Version history

Piedone — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 14:44:26 GMT

Version history

v2.0a3 (28.07.2012):
- Fixing that images in the result could be mixed up
- Refactoring
v2.0a2 (26.07.2012): Fixing exceptions when there were no images to generate a sprite from
v2.0a (26.07.2012): Partial image sprite generation support on the base of Sprite Generator: http://spritegenerator.codeplex.com/
v1.4 (26.07.2012):
- Safer exception handling
- Updated Yui Compressor library
- Big refactoring of inner resource handling; now all the local urls are displayed as relative urls and all the remote ones are displayed as protocol-relative urls
- Regex config fields now can be unlimitedly long
v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Fixing migrations
v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Maintenance release
v1.3.1 (23.03.2012):
- Fixing exception when excluded resource was the last one
- Robust cache clearing
- New names for combined resource entries
v1.3 (02.03.2012):
- Option to enable also for the admin site
- Locking caching (so cache no race conditions can occur even in multi-server environments)
- Refactoring and event handlers
v1.2 (11.02.2012):
- Resource sets feature
- Relative urls for local resources (http/https no longer a problem)
- Browser cache busting when resources are updated
- Settings import/export
- Updated YUI compressor
- Uninstall migration
- Smaller fixes
v1.1.1 (16.12.2011): combination exclusion works how it makes sense (exclusion means the file is not processed in any way), smaller improvements
v1.1 (14.12.2011):
- Images can be embedded as data urls
- Resources excluded from combination can still be minified
- Smarter path handling and relative url adjustment
- Better structured settings form
- Smarter detection of CDN resources
- Improved codebase, refactoring and smaller bugfixes
- Tested with new unit test suite
v1.0 (05.12.2011):
- Seamless combination of overridden stylesheets (thanks to Sebastien Ros for his contribution!)
- Improved relative (image) path processing
- Improved handling of CDN resources (now their url is stored, together with their settings)
- Conditional resources can be also minified (and combined if multiple with the same condition follow each other)
- Improved caching: after the first page view with a set of resources the module practically has no impact on performance
- Reverting combined file storage back to IStorageProvider, so with a custom provider the module works in a cloud hosting environment too
- Exclusion regex for combination too
- Vastly refactored, improved code
v0.8.1 (26.11.2011): Fixing bug with relative image paths
v0.8 (11.11.2011):
- Minification of resources
- Big refactoring
- Several bugfixes
v0.7 (30.10.2011):
- Fixing bug with only converting relative image urls to absolute ones
- Added in-memory caching so after initialization the DB is not touched
v0.6.7 (27.10.2011): Bugfix (visiting admin area with lowercase url bypasses admin page check)
v0.6.6 (23.10.2011): Quick bugfix of relative image paths.
v0.6.5 (23.10.2011):
- Combined resources now stored in module folder
- Faster retrieving of local resources
- Bugfixes
v0.6 (19.10.2011): Bugfixes and partial support for overridden resources.
v0.5 (10.10.2011): First public release

Updated Wiki: Documentation

Piedone — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 14:43:57 GMT

Documentation

Installation

The module is dependent on the Helpful Libraries module, so make sure to install it first!
Combinator needs at least Orchard 1.5!

The module's admin settings

Exclusion filters and why they matter

You can set exclusion filters (regular expressions) on combination, minification and image embedding.

Sometimes a resource does not play well with combination: e.g. WYSIWYG editors (like TinyMCE) tend to load scripts on the fly, based on relative paths to the script's location. Combinator can do nothing with such mechanisms, so it's better not to touch them: therefore, excluding from combination is the way to go.
Javascript minification is not bullet-proof, there are rare cases (mostly with already minified scripts) when the produced script is syntactically incorrect. To overcome this, you can exclude such scripts from minification.
Excluding stylesheets from embedding their images is useful for conditional stylesheets specifically targeted at browsers that don't support data urls.

Development best practices

Don't have Combinator always enabled in your development (and testing) environment, as combined resources make it harder to find bugs in resources. Only enable Combinator steadily in the live environment.
You should, however, always test the impact of the module on your site. Try all pages where distinct sets of resources are used.
When testing in the development environment, don't have Shape Tracing enabled.
Always empty the cache in the live environment when you push resource changes to it.
Unless you adjust the urls to be the same, you can't push combined resources to the live environment (since Combinator adjusts relative paths, these will include the url of your development environment; however if you don't have AppPath set you should be able to publish to live, but if you have one, like the default "OrchardLocal", resources should be recompiled in live). Therefore, it's best to publish changes with the cache emptied and let combination happen on the live site (which will only cause a performance impact on the first views of pages with unique set of resources).

Troubleshooting

Who's using it?

Among others Combinator speeds up the Orchard Gallery and the Hungarian Orchard Community site. If you use and like Combinator, let me know and your site will be listed here.

Many thanks

To randompete, Sebastien Ros (for the incredible overridden stylesheet discovery) and Znowman for their valuable contributions!

See the Version history

Updated Wiki: Home

Piedone — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 08:07:30 GMT

Project Description
An Orchard CMS module that combines and minifies external stylesheets and javascript files to cut down on load times.

Features

Combines and minifies css files
Combines and minifies javascript files
If local and remote resources are mixed (like a local js files with one from a CDN) preserves their original order
Preserves conditional resources and minifies (if multiple with the same condition are after each other, also combines) them
Can combine remote (CDN) resources
Can embed images into stylesheets as data urls
2.0 alpha versions have partial support for image sprite generation
Resource sets can be defined for better client-side caching
Busts browser cache when resources are updated
Tuned to be fast
With custom IStorageProvider can work in cloud hosting too (if there is no write access to the Media folder anyway)
Import/export settings
Administration page:
- Adjust combination exclusion filter
- Enable/disable combination of CDN resources
- Enable/disable minification and adjust exclusion filter
- Enable/disable image embedding and adjust exclusion filter
- Define resource sets
- Enable/disable for admin site
- Empty cache

You can download an install the module from the Orchard Gallery.
For known issues and future plans please see the Issue Tracker.
Please make sure to read the Documentation!
The module's unit tests are in a separate project, Combinator Orchard Module Tests.

Bug reports, feature requests and comments are warmly welcome!

Updated Wiki: Version history

Piedone — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 20:12:22 GMT

Version history

v2.0a2 (26.07.2012): Fixing exceptions when there were no images to generate a sprite from
v2.0a (26.07.2012): Partial image sprite generation support on the base of Sprite Generator: http://spritegenerator.codeplex.com/
v1.4 (26.07.2012):
- Safer exception handling
- Updated Yui Compressor library
- Big refactoring of inner resource handling; now all the local urls are displayed as relative urls and all the remote ones are displayed as protocol-relative urls
- Regex config fields now can be unlimitedly long
v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Fixing migrations
v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Maintenance release
v1.3.1 (23.03.2012):
- Fixing exception when excluded resource was the last one
- Robust cache clearing
- New names for combined resource entries
v1.3 (02.03.2012):
- Option to enable also for the admin site
- Locking caching (so cache no race conditions can occur even in multi-server environments)
- Refactoring and event handlers
v1.2 (11.02.2012):
- Resource sets feature
- Relative urls for local resources (http/https no longer a problem)
- Browser cache busting when resources are updated
- Settings import/export
- Updated YUI compressor
- Uninstall migration
- Smaller fixes
v1.1.1 (16.12.2011): combination exclusion works how it makes sense (exclusion means the file is not processed in any way), smaller improvements
v1.1 (14.12.2011):
- Images can be embedded as data urls
- Resources excluded from combination can still be minified
- Smarter path handling and relative url adjustment
- Better structured settings form
- Smarter detection of CDN resources
- Improved codebase, refactoring and smaller bugfixes
- Tested with new unit test suite
v1.0 (05.12.2011):
- Seamless combination of overridden stylesheets (thanks to Sebastien Ros for his contribution!)
- Improved relative (image) path processing
- Improved handling of CDN resources (now their url is stored, together with their settings)
- Conditional resources can be also minified (and combined if multiple with the same condition follow each other)
- Improved caching: after the first page view with a set of resources the module practically has no impact on performance
- Reverting combined file storage back to IStorageProvider, so with a custom provider the module works in a cloud hosting environment too
- Exclusion regex for combination too
- Vastly refactored, improved code
v0.8.1 (26.11.2011): Fixing bug with relative image paths
v0.8 (11.11.2011):
- Minification of resources
- Big refactoring
- Several bugfixes
v0.7 (30.10.2011):
- Fixing bug with only converting relative image urls to absolute ones
- Added in-memory caching so after initialization the DB is not touched
v0.6.7 (27.10.2011): Bugfix (visiting admin area with lowercase url bypasses admin page check)
v0.6.6 (23.10.2011): Quick bugfix of relative image paths.
v0.6.5 (23.10.2011):
- Combined resources now stored in module folder
- Faster retrieving of local resources
- Bugfixes
v0.6 (19.10.2011): Bugfixes and partial support for overridden resources.
v0.5 (10.10.2011): First public release

Updated Wiki: Documentation

Piedone — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 17:29:32 GMT

Documentation

Installation

The module is dependent on the Helpful Libraries module, so make sure to install it first!
Combinator needs at least Orchard 1.5!

The module's admin settings

Exclusion filters and why they matter

You can set exclusion filters (regular expressions) on combination, minification and image embedding.

Sometimes a resource does not play well with combination: e.g. WYSIWYG editors (like TinyMCE) tend to load scripts on the fly, based on relative paths to the script's location. Combinator can do nothing with such mechanisms, so it's better not to touch them: therefore, excluding from combination is the way to go.
Javascript minification is not bullet-proof, there are rare cases (mostly with already minified scripts) when the produced script is syntactically incorrect. To overcome this, you can exclude such scripts from minification.
Excluding stylesheets from embedding their images is useful for conditional stylesheets specifically targeted at browsers that don't support data urls.

Development best practices

Don't have Combinator always enabled in your development (and testing) environment, as combined resources make it harder to find bugs in resources. Only enable Combinator steadily in the live environment.
You should, however, always test the impact of the module on your site. Try all pages where distinct sets of resources are used.
When testing in the development environment, don't have Shape Tracing enabled.
Always empty the cache in the live environment when you push resource changes to it.
Unless you adjust the urls to be the same, you can't push combined resources to the live environment (since Combinator adjusts relative paths, these will include the url of your development environment; however if you don't have AppPath set you should be able to publish to live, but if you have one, like the default "OrchardLocal", resources should be recompiled in live). Therefore, it's best to publish changes with the cache emptied and let combination happen on the live site (which will only cause a performance impact on the first views of pages with unique set of resources).

Troubleshooting

Who's using it?

Among others Combinator speeds up the Orchard Gallery and the Hungarian Orchard Community site. If you use and like Combinator, let me know and your site will be listed here.

Many thanks

To randompete, Sebastien Ros (for the incredible overridden stylesheet discovery) and Znowman for their valuable contributions!

See the Version history

Updated Wiki: Version history

Piedone — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 17:25:25 GMT

Version history

v2.0a (26.07.2012): Partial image sprite generation support on the base of Sprite Generator: http://spritegenerator.codeplex.com/
v1.4 (26.07.2012):
- Safer exception handling
- Updated Yui Compressor library
- Big refactoring of inner resource handling; now all the local urls are displayed as relative urls and all the remote ones are displayed as protocol-relative urls
- Regex config fields now can be unlimitedly long
v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Fixing migrations
v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Maintenance release
v1.3.1 (23.03.2012):
- Fixing exception when excluded resource was the last one
- Robust cache clearing
- New names for combined resource entries
v1.3 (02.03.2012):
- Option to enable also for the admin site
- Locking caching (so cache no race conditions can occur even in multi-server environments)
- Refactoring and event handlers
v1.2 (11.02.2012):
- Resource sets feature
- Relative urls for local resources (http/https no longer a problem)
- Browser cache busting when resources are updated
- Settings import/export
- Updated YUI compressor
- Uninstall migration
- Smaller fixes
v1.1.1 (16.12.2011): combination exclusion works how it makes sense (exclusion means the file is not processed in any way), smaller improvements
v1.1 (14.12.2011):
- Images can be embedded as data urls
- Resources excluded from combination can still be minified
- Smarter path handling and relative url adjustment
- Better structured settings form
- Smarter detection of CDN resources
- Improved codebase, refactoring and smaller bugfixes
- Tested with new unit test suite
v1.0 (05.12.2011):
- Seamless combination of overridden stylesheets (thanks to Sebastien Ros for his contribution!)
- Improved relative (image) path processing
- Improved handling of CDN resources (now their url is stored, together with their settings)
- Conditional resources can be also minified (and combined if multiple with the same condition follow each other)
- Improved caching: after the first page view with a set of resources the module practically has no impact on performance
- Reverting combined file storage back to IStorageProvider, so with a custom provider the module works in a cloud hosting environment too
- Exclusion regex for combination too
- Vastly refactored, improved code
v0.8.1 (26.11.2011): Fixing bug with relative image paths
v0.8 (11.11.2011):
- Minification of resources
- Big refactoring
- Several bugfixes
v0.7 (30.10.2011):
- Fixing bug with only converting relative image urls to absolute ones
- Added in-memory caching so after initialization the DB is not touched
v0.6.7 (27.10.2011): Bugfix (visiting admin area with lowercase url bypasses admin page check)
v0.6.6 (23.10.2011): Quick bugfix of relative image paths.
v0.6.5 (23.10.2011):
- Combined resources now stored in module folder
- Faster retrieving of local resources
- Bugfixes
v0.6 (19.10.2011): Bugfixes and partial support for overridden resources.
v0.5 (10.10.2011): First public release

Updated Wiki: Version history

Piedone — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:14:49 GMT

Version history

v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Fixing migrations
v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Maintenance release
v1.3.1 (23.03.2012):
- Fixing exception when excluded resource was the last one
- Robust cache clearing
- New names for combined resource entries
v1.3 (02.03.2012):
- Option to enable also for the admin site
- Locking caching (so cache no race conditions can occur even in multi-server environments)
- Refactoring and event handlers
v1.2 (11.02.2012):
- Resource sets feature
- Relative urls for local resources (http/https no longer a problem)
- Browser cache busting when resources are updated
- Settings import/export
- Updated YUI compressor
- Uninstall migration
- Smaller fixes
v1.1.1 (16.12.2011): combination exclusion works how it makes sense (exclusion means the file is not processed in any way), smaller improvements
v1.1 (14.12.2011):
- Images can be embedded as data urls
- Resources excluded from combination can still be minified
- Smarter path handling and relative url adjustment
- Better structured settings form
- Smarter detection of CDN resources
- Improved codebase, refactoring and smaller bugfixes
- Tested with new unit test suite
v1.0 (05.12.2011):
- Seamless combination of overridden stylesheets (thanks to Sebastien Ros for his contribution!)
- Improved relative (image) path processing
- Improved handling of CDN resources (now their url is stored, together with their settings)
- Conditional resources can be also minified (and combined if multiple with the same condition follow each other)
- Improved caching: after the first page view with a set of resources the module practically has no impact on performance
- Reverting combined file storage back to IStorageProvider, so with a custom provider the module works in a cloud hosting environment too
- Exclusion regex for combination too
- Vastly refactored, improved code
v0.8.1 (26.11.2011): Fixing bug with relative image paths
v0.8 (11.11.2011):
- Minification of resources
- Big refactoring
- Several bugfixes
v0.7 (30.10.2011):
- Fixing bug with only converting relative image urls to absolute ones
- Added in-memory caching so after initialization the DB is not touched
v0.6.7 (27.10.2011): Bugfix (visiting admin area with lowercase url bypasses admin page check)
v0.6.6 (23.10.2011): Quick bugfix of relative image paths.
v0.6.5 (23.10.2011):
- Combined resources now stored in module folder
- Faster retrieving of local resources
- Bugfixes
v0.6 (19.10.2011): Bugfixes and partial support for overridden resources.
v0.5 (10.10.2011): First public release

Updated Wiki: Version history

Piedone — Thu, 17 May 2012 13:14:52 GMT

Version history

v1.3.2 (17.05.2012): Maintenance release
v1.3.1 (23.03.2012):
- Fixing exception when excluded resource was the last one
- Robust cache clearing
- New names for combined resource entries
v1.3 (02.03.2012):
- Option to enable also for the admin site
- Locking caching (so cache no race conditions can occur even in multi-server environments)
- Refactoring and event handlers
v1.2 (11.02.2012):
- Resource sets feature
- Relative urls for local resources (http/https no longer a problem)
- Browser cache busting when resources are updated
- Settings import/export
- Updated YUI compressor
- Uninstall migration
- Smaller fixes
v1.1.1 (16.12.2011): combination exclusion works how it makes sense (exclusion means the file is not processed in any way), smaller improvements
v1.1 (14.12.2011):
- Images can be embedded as data urls
- Resources excluded from combination can still be minified
- Smarter path handling and relative url adjustment
- Better structured settings form
- Smarter detection of CDN resources
- Improved codebase, refactoring and smaller bugfixes
- Tested with new unit test suite
v1.0 (05.12.2011):
- Seamless combination of overridden stylesheets (thanks to Sebastien Ros for his contribution!)
- Improved relative (image) path processing
- Improved handling of CDN resources (now their url is stored, together with their settings)
- Conditional resources can be also minified (and combined if multiple with the same condition follow each other)
- Improved caching: after the first page view with a set of resources the module practically has no impact on performance
- Reverting combined file storage back to IStorageProvider, so with a custom provider the module works in a cloud hosting environment too
- Exclusion regex for combination too
- Vastly refactored, improved code
v0.8.1 (26.11.2011): Fixing bug with relative image paths
v0.8 (11.11.2011):
- Minification of resources
- Big refactoring
- Several bugfixes
v0.7 (30.10.2011):
- Fixing bug with only converting relative image urls to absolute ones
- Added in-memory caching so after initialization the DB is not touched
v0.6.7 (27.10.2011): Bugfix (visiting admin area with lowercase url bypasses admin page check)
v0.6.6 (23.10.2011): Quick bugfix of relative image paths.
v0.6.5 (23.10.2011):
- Combined resources now stored in module folder
- Faster retrieving of local resources
- Bugfixes
v0.6 (19.10.2011): Bugfixes and partial support for overridden resources.
v0.5 (10.10.2011): First public release

Updated Wiki: Documentation

Piedone — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:45:13 GMT

Documentation

Installation

The module is dependent on the Helpful Libraries module, so make sure to install it first!
This module works best with Orchard 1.4 but shouldn't have issues with 1.3 either. If you update an Orchard 1.3 site to Combinator 1.3 please make sure that you understand the implications described in this issue!

The module's admin settings

Exclusion filters and why they matter

You can set exclusion filters (regular expressions) on combination, minification and image embedding.

Sometimes a resource does not play well with combination: e.g. WYSIWYG editors (like TinyMCE) tend to load scripts on the fly, based on relative paths to the script's location. Combinator can do nothing with such mechanisms, so it's better not to touch them: therefore, excluding from combination is the way to go.
Javascript minification is not bullet-proof, there are rare cases (mostly with already minified scripts) when the produced script is syntactically incorrect. To overcome this, you can exclude such scripts from minification.
Excluding stylesheets from embedding their images is useful for conditional stylesheets specifically targeted at browsers that don't support data urls.

Development best practices

Don't have Combinator always enabled in your development (and testing) environment, as combined resources make it harder to find bugs in resources. Only enable Combinator steadily in the live environment.
You should, however, always test the impact of the module on your site. Try all pages where distinct sets of resources are used.
When testing in the development environment, don't have Shape Tracing enabled.
Always empty the cache in the live environment when you push resource changes to it.
Unless you adjust the urls to be the same, you can't push combined resources to the live environment (since Combinator adjusts relative paths, these will include the url of your development environment; however if you don't have AppPath set you should be able to publish to live, but if you have one, like the default "OrchardLocal", resources should be recompiled in live). Therefore, it's best to publish changes with the cache emptied and let combination happen on the live site (which will only cause a performance impact on the first views of pages with unique set of resources).

Troubleshooting

Who's using it?

Among others Combinator speeds up the Orchard Gallery and the Hungarian Orchard Community site. If you use and like Combinator, let me know and your site will be listed here.

Many thanks

To randompete, Sebastien Ros (for the incredible overridden stylesheet discovery) and Znowman for their valuable contributions!

See the Version history

Updated Wiki: Home

Piedone — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:03:04 GMT

Project Description
An Orchard CMS module that combines and minifies external stylesheets and javascript files to cut down on load times.

Features

Combines and minifies css files
Combines and minifies javascript files
If local and remote resources are mixed (like a local js files with one from a CDN) preserves their original order
Preserves conditional resources and minifies (if multiple with the same condition are after each other, also combines) them
Can combine remote (CDN) resources
Can embed images into stylesheets as data urls
Resource sets can be defined for better client-side caching
Busts browser cache when resources are updated
Tuned to be fast
With custom IStorageProvider can work in cloud hosting too (if there is no write access to the Media folder anyway)
Import/export settings
Administration page:
- Adjust combination exclusion filter
- Enable/disable combination of CDN resources
- Enable/disable minification and adjust exclusion filter
- Enable/disable image embedding and adjust exclusion filter
- Define resource sets
- Enable/disable for admin site
- Empty cache

Updated Wiki: Version history

Piedone — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:31:31 GMT

Version history

v1.3.1 (23.03.2012):
- Fixing exception when excluded resource was the last one
- Robust cache clearing
- New names for combined resource entries
v1.3 (02.03.2012):
- Option to enable also for the admin site
- Locking caching (so cache no race conditions can occur even in multi-server environments)
- Refactoring and event handlers
v1.2 (11.02.2012):
- Resource sets feature
- Relative urls for local resources (http/https no longer a problem)
- Browser cache busting when resources are updated
- Settings import/export
- Updated YUI compressor
- Uninstall migration
- Smaller fixes
v1.1.1 (16.12.2011): combination exclusion works how it makes sense (exclusion means the file is not processed in any way), smaller improvements
v1.1 (14.12.2011):
- Images can be embedded as data urls
- Resources excluded from combination can still be minified
- Smarter path handling and relative url adjustment
- Better structured settings form
- Smarter detection of CDN resources
- Improved codebase, refactoring and smaller bugfixes
- Tested with new unit test suite
v1.0 (05.12.2011):
- Seamless combination of overridden stylesheets (thanks to Sebastien Ros for his contribution!)
- Improved relative (image) path processing
- Improved handling of CDN resources (now their url is stored, together with their settings)
- Conditional resources can be also minified (and combined if multiple with the same condition follow each other)
- Improved caching: after the first page view with a set of resources the module practically has no impact on performance
- Reverting combined file storage back to IStorageProvider, so with a custom provider the module works in a cloud hosting environment too
- Exclusion regex for combination too
- Vastly refactored, improved code
v0.8.1 (26.11.2011): Fixing bug with relative image paths
v0.8 (11.11.2011):
- Minification of resources
- Big refactoring
- Several bugfixes
v0.7 (30.10.2011):
- Fixing bug with only converting relative image urls to absolute ones
- Added in-memory caching so after initialization the DB is not touched
v0.6.7 (27.10.2011): Bugfix (visiting admin area with lowercase url bypasses admin page check)
v0.6.6 (23.10.2011): Quick bugfix of relative image paths.
v0.6.5 (23.10.2011):
- Combined resources now stored in module folder
- Faster retrieving of local resources
- Bugfixes
v0.6 (19.10.2011): Bugfixes and partial support for overridden resources.
v0.5 (10.10.2011): First public release

Updated Wiki: Version history

Piedone — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:28:01 GMT

Version history

v1.3,1 (23.03.2012):
- Fixing exception when excluded resource was the last one
- Robust cache clearing
- New names for combined resource entries
v1.3 (02.03.2012):
- Option to enable also for the admin site
- Locking caching (so cache no race conditions can occur even in multi-server environments)
- Refactoring and event handlers
v1.2 (11.02.2012):
- Resource sets feature
- Relative urls for local resources (http/https no longer a problem)
- Browser cache busting when resources are updated
- Settings import/export
- Updated YUI compressor
- Uninstall migration
- Smaller fixes
v1.1.1 (16.12.2011): combination exclusion works how it makes sense (exclusion means the file is not processed in any way), smaller improvements
v1.1 (14.12.2011):
- Images can be embedded as data urls
- Resources excluded from combination can still be minified
- Smarter path handling and relative url adjustment
- Better structured settings form
- Smarter detection of CDN resources
- Improved codebase, refactoring and smaller bugfixes
- Tested with new unit test suite
v1.0 (05.12.2011):
- Seamless combination of overridden stylesheets (thanks to Sebastien Ros for his contribution!)
- Improved relative (image) path processing
- Improved handling of CDN resources (now their url is stored, together with their settings)
- Conditional resources can be also minified (and combined if multiple with the same condition follow each other)
- Improved caching: after the first page view with a set of resources the module practically has no impact on performance
- Reverting combined file storage back to IStorageProvider, so with a custom provider the module works in a cloud hosting environment too
- Exclusion regex for combination too
- Vastly refactored, improved code
v0.8.1 (26.11.2011): Fixing bug with relative image paths
v0.8 (11.11.2011):
- Minification of resources
- Big refactoring
- Several bugfixes
v0.7 (30.10.2011):
- Fixing bug with only converting relative image urls to absolute ones
- Added in-memory caching so after initialization the DB is not touched
v0.6.7 (27.10.2011): Bugfix (visiting admin area with lowercase url bypasses admin page check)
v0.6.6 (23.10.2011): Quick bugfix of relative image paths.
v0.6.5 (23.10.2011):
- Combined resources now stored in module folder
- Faster retrieving of local resources
- Bugfixes
v0.6 (19.10.2011): Bugfixes and partial support for overridden resources.
v0.5 (10.10.2011): First public release

Updated Wiki: Documentation

Piedone — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 19:01:41 GMT

Documentation

Installation

The module's admin settings

Exclusion filters and why they matter

You can set exclusion filters (regular expressions) on combination, minification and image embedding.

Sometimes a resource does not play well with combination: e.g. WYSIWYG editors (like TinyMCE) tend to load scripts on the fly, based on relative paths to the script's location. Combinator can do nothing with such mechanisms, so it's better not to touch them: therefore, excluding from combination is the way to go.
Javascript minification is not bullet-proof, there are rare cases (mostly with already minified scripts) when the produced script is syntactically incorrect. To overcome this, you can exclude such scripts from minification.
Excluding stylesheets from embedding their images is useful for conditional stylesheets specifically targeted at browsers that don't support data urls.

Development best practices

Don't have Combinator always enabled in your development (and testing) environment, as combined resources make it harder to find bugs in resources. Only enable Combinator steadily in the live environment.
You should, however, always test the impact of the module on your site. Try all pages where distinct sets of resources are used.
When testing in the development environment, don't have Shape Tracing enabled.
Always empty the cache in the live environment when you push resource changes to it.
Unless you adjust the urls to be the same, you can't push combined resources to the live environment (since Combinator adjusts relative paths, these will include the url of your development environment; however if you don't have AppPath set you should be able to publish to live, but if you have one, like the default "OrchardLocal", resources should be recompiled in live). Therefore, it's best to publish changes with the cache emptied and let combination happen on the live site (which will only cause a performance impact on the first views of pages with unique set of resources).

Troubleshooting

Many thanks

To randompete, Sebastien Ros (for the incredible overridden stylesheet discovery) and Znowman for their valuable contributions!

See the Version history

Updated Wiki: Documentation

Piedone — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 16:43:17 GMT

Documentation

Installation

The module is dependent on the Helpful Libraries module, so make sure to install it first!
This module works best with Orchard 1.4 but shouldn't have issues with 1.3 either. If you update on an Orchard 1.3 site to Combinator 1.3 please make sure that you understand the implications described in this issue!

The module's admin settings

Exclusion filters and why they matter

You can set exclusion filters (regular expressions) on combination, minification and image embedding.

Sometimes a resource does not play well with combination: e.g. WYSIWYG editors (like TinyMCE) tend to load scripts on the fly, based on relative paths to the script's location. Combinator can do nothing with such mechanisms, so it's better not to touch them: therefore, excluding from combination is the way to go.
Javascript minification is not bullet-proof, there are rare cases (mostly with already minified scripts) when the produced script is syntactically incorrect. To overcome this, you can exclude such scripts from minification.
Excluding stylesheets from embedding their images is useful for conditional stylesheets specifically targeted at browsers that don't support data urls.

Development best practices

Don't have Combinator always enabled in your development (and testing) environment, as combined resources make it harder to find bugs in resources. Only enable Combinator steadily in the live environment.
You should, however, always test the impact of the module on your site. Try all pages where distinct sets of resources are used.
When testing in the development environment, don't have Shape Tracing enabled.
Always empty the cache in the live environment when you push resource changes to it.
Unless you adjust the urls to be the same, you can't push combined resources to the live environment (since Combinator adjusts relative paths, these will include the url of your development environment; however if you don't have AppPath set you should be able to publish to live, but if you have one, like the default "OrchardLocal", resources should be recompiled in live). Therefore, it's best to publish changes with the cache emptied and let combination happen on the live site (which will only cause a performance impact on the first views of pages with unique set of resources).

Troubleshooting

Many thanks

To randompete, Sebastien Ros (for the incredible overridden stylesheet discovery) and Znowman for their valuable contributions!

See the Version history

Updated Wiki: Home

Piedone — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:07:58 GMT

Project Description
An Orchard CMS module that combines and minifies external stylesheets and javascript files to cut down on load times.

Features

Combines and minifies css files
Combines and minifies javascript files
If local and remote resources are mixed (like a local js files with one from a CDN) preserves their original order
Preserves conditional resources and minifies (if multiple with the same condition are after each other, also combines) them
Can combine remote (CDN) resources
Can embed images into stylesheets as data urls
Resource sets can be defined for better client-side caching
Busts browser cache when resources are updated
Tuned to be fast
With custom IStorageProvider can work in cloud hosting too (if there is no write access to the Media folder anyway)
Administration page:
- Adjust combination exclusion filter
- Enable/disable combination of CDN resources
- Enable/disable minification and adjust exclusion filter
- Enable/disable image embedding and adjust exclusion filter
- Define resource sets
- Enable/disable for admin site
- Empty cache