A way to do this is to call the php file directly in the script tag or
css link tag i.e.
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.php" />
<script language="javascript" src="scripts.php"></script>
The nice thing about this is you can then specify which plugins or
extra css to include in the querystring like this
<link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.php?
snippet[]=common&snippet[]=specific&snippet[]=someTheme" />
<script language="javascript" src="scripts.php?
file[]=jquery&file[]=jqTooltip&file[]=jqModal></script> etc.
The php script would then parse all these together and serve it up as
one file for css and one for js. As long as any subsequent pages had
the same url, it would get this file from the browser cache instead of
the server.
It could also check if the browser accepts zipped files and serve them
up gzipped, which I think would have better performance implications
than packing/unpacking, both in terms of size and speed. It would make
for a kick-ass download manager, putting full control in the hands of
the developer IMHO.
Paul.
On Jul 16, 10:00 am, "Gilles (Webunity)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I've build something similar to this; here's how i did it:
> on my webserver, there are a bunch of JS and CSS files. During each
> page load, i create an array of CSS and JS files, which have to be
> included on that page. Currently i store these in session, but that
> isn't needed. In the header of the page, i have 2 calls, one to "/
> framework/load?css/<scriptname>" and one to "/framework/load?js/</
> scriptname>". That script ("load" is a PHP file which reads the array,
> generates a hash out of it, checks to see if the files are modified
> since the last time they where "build" and if so, recombines all files
> and minifies them (in case of JS: Packer, in case of CSS: remove
> newlines, comments and tabs). After compiling it writes the generated
> file to disk and serves that to the browser. It was a lot of work, but
> it allows me to keep all original JS and CSS files on the server (=
> greater maintainability) and improves load times drastically.
>
> HTH
>
> -- Gilles
>
> On Jul 16, 7:55 am, Klaus Hartl <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Stephan Beal wrote:
> > > Hi, all!
>
> > > i just wanted to take a moment to share a tip which i don't see used
> > > too often on live sites:
>
> > > Combine all of your JS scripts into a single file. This helps reduce
> > > the load time of the page by reducing the number of separate GET
> > > requests.
>
> > > In principal you should be able to do the following to combine the
> > > files:
>
> > > cat file1.js file2.js file3.js > all.js
>
> > > but some scripts do not work with this because they are missing a
> > > trailing semicolon (shame on them!). A simple workaround is:
>
> > > for i in file1.js file2.js file3.js; do
> > > cat $i
> > > echo ';'
> > > done > all.js
>
> > > If you're using GNU Make to build your project, here's a bit of Make
> > > code which does this:
>
> > > mega.js.inputs := jquery.pack.js interface.js \
> > > jquery.blockUI.pack.js jquery.contextmenu.packed.js \
> > > jquery.idTabs.pack.js \
> > > jquery.colorPicker.js \
> > > jquery.bogoTabs.js
> > > $(mega.js.inputs):
> > > $(mega.js): $(mega.js.inputs)
> > > @echo "Creating $@ ..."; \
> > > for i in $(mega.js.inputs); do cat $$i; echo ';'; done > $@
> > > # ^^^^^ without the extra semicolon, the included file doesn't work
>
> > > Obviously, edit $(mega.js.inputs) to suit your project.
>
> > That is very reasonable. Here's some information
> > why:http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/11/28/performance-research-part-1/
>
> > If you're on Rails, you can use the AssetPackager plugin that does the
> > merging automatically for you depending on the environment.
>
> > --Klaus
