htaccess-minifier

A PHP script to "minimize" an .htaccess file.

History

I was looking into ways to improve the performance of a web server. One of the things I looked at was the .htaccess file. In addition to being a little long it also had a measurable amount of comments. The comments are useful to humans but the server doesn't really care.

After using an editor macro to effectively minimize the .htaccess file I decided that the task would have to be repeated for other web servers. Ugh

So I created a PHP script that will do the work for me... and I'm sharing it with you...

What is Minified?

The "minification" done here is not exactly like what's done for JavaScript, CSS, etc. But the script will -

• Leave marked blocks intact.
• Remove blank lines.
• Remove lines that begin with # (comments).
• Reduce white-space, leaves only one space character between non-space characters.
• Create output that is human readable.

Running the Demonstration

There are two PHP files provided -

• run.php - Calls the htaccessMinify.php:htaccessMinify() function.
• htaccessMinify.php - Contains htaccessMinify() and other functions for minification
• example_htaccessmin.json - Contains argument values to be used when calling htaccessMinify(). See .

To minify an .htaccess file:

Note: You will need PHP 5.6 or newer. Check for PHP with php --version.

1. Copy an .htaccess file into the same folder where the two PHP files are. Or, use the sample file in this repository.
2. Run this command - php ./run.php.

You should see something like this - min.htaccess has been saved - lines in: 259, lines out: 171. And you will have a new file named min.htaccess.

Running as a Utility

This is how I use htaccess-minifier. I add the 3 files to a folder in a website project and edit the example_htaccessmin.json file and save it as htaccessmin.json.

The JSON file contains argument values to be used when calling htaccessMinify(). For example:

{
    "in":".htaccess",
    "fileroot":"path/to/your/files/",
    "out": "min.htaccess",
    "exclblocks": [
        ["BEGIN cPanel-generated handler", "END cPanel-generated handler"]
        ,["### start", "### end"]
    ],
    "rmvsp": true,
    "rmvnl": true
}

Edit the value of "fileroot" to point to where your .htaccess file is located. And edit the rest of the values as needed. See the following section for explanations of the other values' use.

htaccessMinify() Details

See htaccessMinify() source.

Synopsis:

function htaccessMinify($in, $out, $exclblocks = null, $rmvsp = false, $rmvnl = false)

Where:

• $in - the path+name of the file to minimize, required, EOL must be newline only, no CRLF pairs
• $out - the path+name of the minimized file, required
• $exclblocks - a 2 dimensional array, contains start and end block markers, optional
• $rmvsp - if true remove extra white space, optional
• $rmvnl - if true remove blank lines, optional

The $in and $out arguments are required, the rest are optional and have default values.

Example Usage:

Minimal Usage:

// minify the file... 
// NO exclusion blocks, NO space reduction, NO empty line removal
$ret = htaccessMinify('.htaccess', 'min.htaccess');
// how did it go?
if($ret->r === true) {
    exit($ret->m .' - lines in: '.$ret->i.', lines out: '.$ret->o."\n");
} else {
    exit('ERROR - '.$ret->m."\n");
}

Minimize the file, and additionally remove empty lines:

$ret = htaccessMinify('.htaccess', 'min.htaccess', null, false, true);

Minimize the file, set exclusion blocks, reduce spaces, and remove empty lines:

// The following are the "start" and "end" of what is 
// referred to as an "exclusion block". It is a block 
// of lines that will not be minified.
$exclblocks = [
    ['BEGIN cPanel-generated handler', 'END cPanel-generated handler']
    ,['### start', '### end']
];
// minify the file, assuming it's in the same location as this script...
// provide exclusion block markers, reduce space characters, remove empty lines...
$ret = htaccessMinify('.htaccess', 'min.htaccess', $exclblocks, true, true);

The return value $ret should be checked, for example:

// how did it go?
if(isset($ret->r) && ($ret->r === true)) {
    exit($ret->m .' - lines in: '.$ret->i.', lines out: '.$ret->o."\n");
} else {
    exit('ERROR - '.$ret->m."\n");
}

Exclusion Block Markers

To exclude a block of lines from minification they need to be marked with unique start and ending lines. For example -

### start
some stuff goes       here.
# and a comment
### end

With the following exclusion markers -

$exclblocks = [
    ['### start', '### end']
];

Any block that is "marked" will be left intact and copied into the minified file.

See blockCheck() source.

Space Reduction

Space character reduction is done per line. Essentially it's this -

• Read a line
• Substitute all " " (2 space) occurrences with " " (1 space)
• Repeat the substitution until " " (2 spaces) is no longer found in the line
• Write the line to the output file

See reduceSpace() source.

Empty Line Removal

If a line contains only a \n (newline) do not write it to the output file.

What Else Can It Do?

Well, probably with some minor modifications this script could do the same type of minification for shell script files. Just watch out for the first line!

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