grunt-contrib-uglify
Advanced tools
The grunt-contrib-uglify package is a Grunt plugin that provides the ability to minify JavaScript files using UglifyJS. It helps in reducing the file size of JavaScript files by removing unnecessary characters, comments, and whitespace, which can improve the performance of web applications.
Minify JavaScript files
This feature allows you to minify multiple JavaScript files into a single output file. The code sample demonstrates how to configure the grunt-contrib-uglify task to take two input files (input1.js and input2.js) and produce a minified output file (output.min.js).
{
"uglify": {
"my_target": {
"files": {
"dest/output.min.js": ["src/input1.js", "src/input2.js"]
}
}
}
}Generate source maps
This feature allows you to generate source maps for the minified JavaScript files. Source maps help in debugging by mapping the minified code back to the original source code. The code sample shows how to configure the grunt-contrib-uglify task to generate a source map file (output.map) along with the minified output file (output.min.js).
{
"uglify": {
"my_target": {
"options": {
"sourceMap": true,
"sourceMapName": "dest/output.map"
},
"files": {
"dest/output.min.js": ["src/input1.js", "src/input2.js"]
}
}
}
}Customize UglifyJS options
This feature allows you to customize the UglifyJS options for the minification process. The code sample demonstrates how to configure the grunt-contrib-uglify task to disable variable name mangling and remove console statements from the output file (output.min.js).
{
"uglify": {
"my_target": {
"options": {
"mangle": false,
"compress": {
"drop_console": true
}
},
"files": {
"dest/output.min.js": ["src/input1.js", "src/input2.js"]
}
}
}
}UglifyJS is a JavaScript parser, minifier, compressor, and beautifier toolkit. It is the underlying library used by grunt-contrib-uglify. While grunt-contrib-uglify is a Grunt plugin, uglify-js can be used directly in Node.js scripts or other build tools for more fine-grained control over the minification process.
Terser is a JavaScript parser and mangler/compressor toolkit for ES6+. It is a fork of UglifyJS that aims to support modern JavaScript syntax. Terser can be used as an alternative to UglifyJS for projects that use ES6+ features. It can be integrated with various build tools, including Grunt, via plugins like grunt-terser.
Babel Minify (also known as babel-preset-minify) is a minifier based on the Babel toolchain. It provides a set of Babel plugins that perform code transformations to reduce the size of JavaScript files. Babel Minify is particularly useful for projects that already use Babel for transpiling ES6+ code to ES5.
Minify files with UglifyJS.
This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.0
If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:
npm install grunt-contrib-uglify --save-dev
Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-uglify');
Run this task with the grunt uglify command.
Task targets, files and options may be specified according to the grunt Configuring tasks guide.
Version 3.x introduced changes to configuring source maps. Accordingly, if you don't use the source map options you should be able to upgrade seamlessly. If you do use source maps, see below.
sourceMapRoot - The location of your sources is now calculated for you when sourceMap is set to true
sourceMapPrefix - No longer necessary for the above reason
sourceMappingURL - Once again, this is calculated automatically
sourceMap - Only accepts a Boolean value. Generates a map with a default name for you
sourceMapName - Accepts a string or function to change the location or name of your map
sourceMapIncludeSources - Embed the content of your source files directly into the map
expression - Accepts a Boolean value. Parse a single expression (JSON or single functions)
This task primarily delegates to UglifyJS2, so please consider the UglifyJS documentation as required reading for advanced configuration.
Type: Boolean Object
Default: {}
Turn on or off mangling with default options. If an Object is specified, it is passed directly to ast.mangle_names() and ast.compute_char_frequency() (mimicking command line behavior).
Type: Boolean Object
Default: {}
Turn on or off source compression with default options. If an Object is specified, it is passed as options to UglifyJS.Compressor().
Type: Boolean Object
Default: false
Turns on beautification of the generated source code. An Object will be merged and passed with the options sent to UglifyJS.OutputStream()
Type: Boolean
Default: false
Parse a single expression, rather than a program (for parsing JSON)
Choices: 'min', 'gzip'
Default: 'min'
Either report only minification result or report minification and gzip results.
This is useful to see exactly how well clean-css is performing but using 'gzip' will make the task take 5-10x longer to complete. Example output.
Type: Boolean
Default: false
If true, a source map file will be generated in the same directory as the dest file. By default it will have the same basename as the dest file, but with a .map extension.
Type: String Function
Default: undefined
To customize the name or location of the generated source map, pass a string to indicate where to write the source map to. If a function is provided, the uglify destination is passed as the argument and the return value will be used as the file name.
Type: String Function
Default: undefined
The location of an input source map from an earlier compilation, e.g. from CoffeeScript. If a function is provided, the uglify source is passed as the argument and the return value will be used as the sourceMap name. This only makes sense when there's one source file.
Type: Boolean
Default: false
Pass this flag if you want to include the content of source files in the source map as sourcesContent property.
Type: Object
Default: undefined
Wrap all of the code in a closure with a configurable arguments/parameters list.
Each key-value pair in the enclose object is effectively an argument-parameter pair.
Type: String
Default: undefined
Wrap all of the code in a closure, an easy way to make sure nothing is leaking.
For variables that need to be public exports and global variables are made available.
The value of wrap is the global variable exports will be available as.
Type: Number
Default: 32000
Limit the line length in symbols. Pass maxLineLen = 0 to disable this safety feature.
Type: Boolean
Default: false
Enables to encode non-ASCII characters as \uXXXX.
Type: Boolean
Default: false
When using wrap this will make all global functions and variables available via the export variable.
Type: Boolean String Function
Default: undefined
Options: false 'all' 'some'
Turn on preservation of comments.
false will strip all comments'all' will preserve all comments in code blocks that have not been squashed or dropped'some' will preserve all comments that start with a bang (!) or include a closure compiler style directive (@preserve @license @cc_on)Function specify your own comment preservation function. You will be passed the current node and the current comment and are expected to return either true or falseType: String
Default: empty string
This string will be prepended to the minified output. Template strings (e.g. <%= config.value %> will be expanded automatically.
Type: String
Default: empty string
This string will be appended to the minified output. Template strings (e.g. <%= config.value %> will be expanded automatically.
This configuration will compress and mangle the input files using the default options.
// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
uglify: {
my_target: {
files: {
'dest/output.min.js': ['src/input1.js', 'src/input2.js']
}
}
}
});
Specify mangle: false to prevent changes to your variable and function names.
// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
uglify: {
options: {
mangle: false
},
my_target: {
files: {
'dest/output.min.js': ['src/input.js']
}
}
}
});
You can specify identifiers to leave untouched with an except array in the mangle options.
// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
uglify: {
options: {
mangle: {
except: ['jQuery', 'Backbone']
}
},
my_target: {
files: {
'dest/output.min.js': ['src/input.js']
}
}
}
});
Generate a source map by setting the sourceMap option to true. The generated
source map will be in the same directory as the destination file. Its name will be the
basename of the destination file with a .map extension. Override these
defaults with the sourceMapName attribute.
// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
uglify: {
my_target: {
options: {
sourceMap: true,
sourceMapName: 'path/to/sourcemap.map'
},
files: {
'dest/output.min.js': ['src/input.js']
}
}
}
});
Set the sourceMapIncludeSources option to true to embed your sources directly into the map. To include
a source map from a previous compilation pass it as the value of the sourceMapIn option.
// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
uglify: {
my_target: {
options: {
sourceMap: true,
sourceMapIncludeSources: true,
sourceMapIn: 'example/coffeescript-sourcemap.js', // input sourcemap from a previous compilation
},
files: {
'dest/output.min.js': ['src/input.js'],
},
},
},
});
Refer to the UglifyJS SourceMap Documentation for more information.
Specify drop_console: true as part of the compress options to discard calls to console.* functions.
// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
uglify: {
options: {
compress: {
drop_console: true
}
},
my_target: {
files: {
'dest/output.min.js': ['src/input.js']
}
}
}
});
Specify beautify: true to beautify your code for debugging/troubleshooting purposes.
Pass an object to manually configure any other output options passed directly to UglifyJS.OutputStream().
See UglifyJS Codegen documentation for more information.
Note that manual configuration will require you to explicitly set beautify: true if you want traditional, beautified output.
// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
uglify: {
my_target: {
options: {
beautify: true
},
files: {
'dest/output.min.js': ['src/input.js']
}
},
my_advanced_target: {
options: {
beautify: {
width: 80,
beautify: true
}
},
files: {
'dest/output.min.js': ['src/input.js']
}
}
}
});
In this example, running grunt uglify:my_target will prepend a banner created by interpolating the banner template string with the config object. Here, those properties are the values imported from the package.json file (which are available via the pkg config property) plus today's date.
Note: you don't have to use an external JSON file. It's also valid to create the pkg object inline in the config. That being said, if you already have a JSON file, you might as well reference it.
// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
pkg: grunt.file.readJSON('package.json'),
uglify: {
options: {
banner: '/*! <%= pkg.name %> - v<%= pkg.version %> - ' +
'<%= grunt.template.today("yyyy-mm-dd") %> */'
},
my_target: {
files: {
'dest/output.min.js': ['src/input.js']
}
}
}
});
You can also enable UglifyJS conditional compilation. This is commonly used to remove debug code blocks for production builds.
See UglifyJS global definitions documentation for more information.
// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
uglify: {
options: {
compress: {
global_defs: {
"DEBUG": false
},
dead_code: true
}
},
my_target: {
files: {
'dest/output.min.js': ['src/input.js']
}
}
}
});
This configuration will compress and mangle the files dynamically.
// Project configuration.
grunt.initConfig({
uglify: {
my_target: {
files: [{
expand: true,
cwd: 'src/js',
src: '**/*.js',
dest: 'dest/js'
}]
}
}
});
grunt.template.processsourceMapIncludeSources option.report option.Task submitted by "Cowboy" Ben Alman
This file was generated on Wed Sep 17 2014 21:59:24.
FAQs
Minify JavaScript files with UglifyJS
The npm package grunt-contrib-uglify receives a total of 113,232 weekly downloads. As such, grunt-contrib-uglify popularity was classified as popular.
We found that grunt-contrib-uglify demonstrated a not healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released a year ago. It has 9 open source maintainers collaborating on the project.
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