Bundler and Minifier

A Visual Studio extension that let's you configure bundling and minification of JS, CSS and HTML files.

Download the extension at the VS Gallery or get the nightly build

See the changelog for changes and roadmap.

Features

• Bundles CSS, JavaScript or HTML files into a single output file
• Saving a source file triggers re-bundling automatically
• Support for globbing patterns
• MSBuild support for CI scenarios supported
• Minify individual or bundled CSS, JavaScript and HTML files
• Minification options for each language is customizable
• Shows a watermark when opening a generated file
• Task Runner Explorer integration
• Command line support
• Shortcut to update all bundles in solution

A note about encoding

All files without a BOM (Byte Order Mark) is treated as UTF-8. If you see strange characters in the output bundle files, you may want to consider saving the input files as UTF-8 or an encoding that lets you specify a BOM.

Bundling

Select 2 or more of the same type of files in Solution Explorer to create a bundle.

Any edits being made to the source files will instantly produce updated bundle file output.

The bundle configuration is stored in a file called bundleconfig.json which gets added to the root of the project.

Minification

Minify any JS, CSS or HTML file by right-clicking it in Solution Explorer. That will create a <filename>.min.<ext> and nest it under the original file.

When the original file is modified, a new min file is produced instantly.

Bundle on build / CI support

In ASP.NET MVC and WebForms projects you can enable bundling and minification as part of the build step. Simply right-click the bundleconfig.json file to enable it.

Clicking the menu item will prompt you with information about what will happen if you click the OK button.

A NuGet package will be installed into the packages folder without adding any files to the project itself. That NuGet package contains an MSBuild task that will run the exact same compilers on the bundleconfig.json file in the root of the project.

Update all bundles

You can run the bundler on all bundleconfig.json files in the solution by using the keyboard shortcut Shift+Alt+i or by using the button on the top level Build menu.

Source maps

Source maps are supported for JavaScript minification only at this time.

A .map file is produced next to the .min.js file automatically, but if you manually delete the .map file, a new one will not be created on subsequent minifications.

Task Runner Explorer

Get a quick overview of the files you've specified or execute a bundle directly in Task Runner Explorer.

You can even set bindings so that bundling/minification happens automatically during certain Visual Studio events, such as BeforeBuild and Project Open.

bundleconfig.json

The extension adds a bundleconfig.json file at the root of the project which is used to configure all bundling.

Here's an example of what that file looks like:

[
  {
    "outputFileName": "output/bundle.css",
    "inputFiles": [
      "css/lib/**/*.css", // globbing patterns are supported
      "css/input/site.css"
    ],
    "minify": {
        "enabled": true,
        "commentMode": "all"
    }
  },
  {
    "outputFileName": "output/all.js",
    "inputFiles": [
      "js/*.js",
      "!js/ignore.js" // start with a ! to exclude files
    ]
  },
  {
    "outputFileName": "output/app.js",
    "inputFiles": [
      "input/main.js",
      "input/core/*.js" // all .js files in input/core/
    ]
  }
]