NAME

CSS::Minifier::XS - XS based CSS minifier

SYNOPSIS

use CSS::Minifier::XS qw(minify);
my $css      = '...';
my $minified = minify($css);

DESCRIPTION

CSS::Minifier::XS is a CSS "minifier"; its designed to remove unnecessary whitespace and comments from CSS files, while also not breaking the CSS.

CSS::Minifier::XS is similar in function to CSS::Minifier, but is substantially faster as its written in XS and not just pure Perl.

METHODS

• minify($css)

  Minifies the given $css, returning the minified CSS back to the caller.

HOW IT WORKS

CSS::Minifier::XS minifies the CSS by removing unnecessary whitespace from CSS documents. Comment blocks are also removed, except when (a) they contain the word "copyright" in them, or (b) they're needed to implement the "Mac/IE Comment Hack".

Internally, the minification is done by taking multiple passes through the CSS document:

Pass 1: Tokenize

First, we go through and parse the CSS document into a series of tokens internally. The tokenizing process does not check to make sure that you've got syntactically valid CSS, it just breaks up the text into a stream of tokens suitable for processing by the subsequent stages.

Pass 2: Collapse

We then march through the token list and collapse certain tokens down to their smallest possible representation. If they're still included in the final results we only want to include them at their shortest.

• Whitespace

  Runs of multiple whitespace characters are reduced down to a single whitespace character. If the whitespace contains any "end of line" (EOL) characters, then the end result is the first EOL character encountered. Otherwise, the result is the first whitespace character in the run.

• Comments

  Comments implementing the "Mac/IE Comment Hack" are collapsed down to the smallest possible comment that would still implement the hack ("/*\*/" to start the hack, and "/**/" to end it).

• Zero Units

  Zero Units (e.g. 0px) are reduced down to just "0", as the CSS specification indicates that the unit is not required when its a zero value.

Pass 3: Pruning

We then go back through the token list and prune and remove unnecessary tokens.

• Whitespace

  Wherever possible, whitespace is removed; before+after comment blocks, and before+after various symbols/sigils.

• Comments

  Comments that either (a) are needed to implement the "Mac/IE Comment Hack", or that (b) contain the word "copyright" in them are preserved. All other comments are removed.

• Symbols/Sigils

  Semi-colons that are immediately followed by a closing brace (e.g. ";}") are removed; semi-colons are needed to separate multiple declarations, but aren't required at the end of a group.

• Everything else

  We keep everything else; identifiers, quoted literal strings, symbols/sigils, etc.

Pass 4: Re-assembly

Lastly, we go back through the token list and re-assemble it all back into a single CSS string, which is then returned back to the caller.

AUTHOR

Graham TerMarsch (cpan@howlingfrog.com)

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2007-, Graham TerMarsch. All Rights Reserved.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same license as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO

CSS::Minifier.