uglify-es
uglify-es is an ECMAScript 2015 parser, minifier, compressor and beautifier toolkit.
Note:
- The
uglify-es
API and CLI is compatible with uglify-js@3.x
. uglify-es
is not backwards compatible with the uglify-js@2.x
API and CLI.
Install
First make sure you have installed the latest version of node.js
(You may need to restart your computer after this step).
From NPM for use as a command line app:
npm install uglify-es -g
From NPM for programmatic use:
npm install uglify-es
Usage
uglifyjs [input files] [options]
UglifyJS can take multiple input files. It's recommended that you pass the
input files first, then pass the options. UglifyJS will parse input files
in sequence and apply any compression options. The files are parsed in the
same global scope, that is, a reference from a file to some
variable/function declared in another file will be matched properly.
If no input file is specified, UglifyJS will read from STDIN.
If you wish to pass your options before the input files, separate the two with
a double dash to prevent input files being used as option arguments:
uglifyjs --compress --mangle -- input.js
The available options are:
-h, --help Print usage information.
-V, --version Print version number.
-p, --parse <options> Specify parser options:
`acorn` Use Acorn for parsing.
`bare_returns` Allow return outside of functions.
Useful when minifying CommonJS
modules and Userscripts that may
be anonymous function wrapped (IIFE)
by the .user.js engine `caller`.
`expression` Parse a single expression, rather than
a program (for parsing JSON).
`spidermonkey` Assume input files are SpiderMonkey
AST format (as JSON).
-c, --compress [options] Enable compressor/specify compressor options:
`pure_funcs` List of functions that can be safely
removed when their return values are
not used.
-m, --mangle [options] Mangle names/specify mangler options:
`reserved` List of names that should not be mangled.
--mangle-props [options] Mangle properties/specify mangler options:
`builtins` Mangle property names that overlaps
with standard JavaScript globals.
`debug` Add debug prefix and suffix.
`domprops` Mangle property names that overlaps
with DOM properties.
`keep_quoted` Only mangle unquoted properies.
`regex` Only mangle matched property names.
`reserved` List of names that should not be mangled.
-b, --beautify [options] Beautify output/specify output options:
`beautify` Enabled with `--beautify` by default.
`preamble` Preamble to prepend to the output. You
can use this to insert a comment, for
example for licensing information.
This will not be parsed, but the source
map will adjust for its presence.
`quote_style` Quote style:
0 - auto
1 - single
2 - double
3 - original
`wrap_iife` Wrap IIFEs in parenthesis. Note: you may
want to disable `negate_iife` under
compressor options.
-o, --output <file> Output file path (default STDOUT). Specify `ast` or
`spidermonkey` to write UglifyJS or SpiderMonkey AST
as JSON to STDOUT respectively.
--comments [filter] Preserve copyright comments in the output. By
default this works like Google Closure, keeping
JSDoc-style comments that contain "@license" or
"@preserve". You can optionally pass one of the
following arguments to this flag:
- "all" to keep all comments
- a valid JS RegExp like `/foo/` or `/^!/` to
keep only matching comments.
Note that currently not *all* comments can be
kept when compression is on, because of dead
code removal or cascading statements into
sequences.
--config-file <file> Read `minify()` options from JSON file.
-d, --define <expr>[=value] Global definitions.
--ie8 Support non-standard Internet Explorer 8.
Equivalent to setting `ie8: true` in `minify()`
for `compress`, `mangle` and `output` options.
By default UglifyJS will not try to be IE-proof.
--keep-fnames Do not mangle/drop function names. Useful for
code relying on Function.prototype.name.
--name-cache File to hold mangled name mappings.
--self Build UglifyJS as a library (implies --wrap UglifyJS)
--source-map [options] Enable source map/specify source map options:
`base` Path to compute relative paths from input files.
`content` Input source map, useful if you're compressing
JS that was generated from some other original
code. Specify "inline" if the source map is
included within the sources.
`filename` Name and/or location of the output source.
`includeSources` Pass this flag if you want to include
the content of source files in the
source map as sourcesContent property.
`root` Path to the original source to be included in
the source map.
`url` If specified, path to the source map to append in
`//# sourceMappingURL`.
--stats Display operations run time on STDERR.
--toplevel Compress and/or mangle variables in toplevel scope.
--verbose Print diagnostic messages.
--warn Print warning messages.
--wrap <name> Embed everything in a big function, making the
“exports” and “global” variables available. You
need to pass an argument to this option to
specify the name that your module will take
when included in, say, a browser.
Specify --output
(-o
) to declare the output file. Otherwise the output
goes to STDOUT.
Source map options
UglifyJS can generate a source map file, which is highly useful for
debugging your compressed JavaScript. To get a source map, pass
--source-map --output output.js
(source map will be written out to
output.js.map
).
Additional options:
-
--source-map filename=<NAME>
to specify the name of the source map.
-
--source-map root=<URL>
to pass the URL where the original files can be found.
Otherwise UglifyJS assumes HTTP X-SourceMap
is being used and will omit the
//# sourceMappingURL=
directive.
-
--source-map url=<URL>
to specify the URL where the source map can be found.
For example:
uglifyjs js/file1.js js/file2.js \
-o foo.min.js -c -m \
--source-map root="http://foo.com/src",url=foo.min.js.map
The above will compress and mangle file1.js
and file2.js
, will drop the
output in foo.min.js
and the source map in foo.min.js.map
. The source
mapping will refer to http://foo.com/src/js/file1.js
and
http://foo.com/src/js/file2.js
(in fact it will list http://foo.com/src
as the source map root, and the original files as js/file1.js
and
js/file2.js
).
Composed source map
When you're compressing JS code that was output by a compiler such as
CoffeeScript, mapping to the JS code won't be too helpful. Instead, you'd
like to map back to the original code (i.e. CoffeeScript). UglifyJS has an
option to take an input source map. Assuming you have a mapping from
CoffeeScript → compiled JS, UglifyJS can generate a map from CoffeeScript →
compressed JS by mapping every token in the compiled JS to its original
location.
To use this feature pass --source-map content="/path/to/input/source.map"
or --source-map content=inline
if the source map is included inline with
the sources.
Mangler options
To enable the mangler you need to pass --mangle
(-m
). The following
(comma-separated) options are supported:
When mangling is enabled but you want to prevent certain names from being
mangled, you can declare those names with --mangle reserved
— pass a
comma-separated list of names. For example:
uglifyjs ... -m reserved=[$,require,exports]
to prevent the require
, exports
and $
names from being changed.
Mangling property names (--mangle-props
)
Note: this will probably break your code. Mangling property names is a
separate step, different from variable name mangling. Pass
--mangle-props
. It will mangle all properties that are seen in some
object literal, or that are assigned to. For example:
var x = {
foo: 1
};
x.bar = 2;
x["baz"] = 3;
x[condition ? "moo" : "boo"] = 4;
console.log(x.something());
In the above code, foo
, bar
, baz
, moo
and boo
will be replaced
with single characters, while something()
will be left as is.
In order for this to be of any use, we avoid mangling standard JS names by
default (--mangle-props builtins
to override).
A default exclusion file is provided in tools/domprops.json
which should
cover most standard JS and DOM properties defined in various browsers. Pass
--mangle-props domprops
to disable this feature.
You can also use a regular expression to define which property names should be
mangled. For example, --mangle-props regex=/^_/
will only mangle property
names that start with an underscore.
When you compress multiple files using this option, in order for them to
work together in the end we need to ensure somehow that one property gets
mangled to the same name in all of them. For this, pass --name-cache filename.json
and UglifyJS will maintain these mappings in a file which can then be reused.
It should be initially empty. Example:
rm -f /tmp/cache.json # start fresh
uglifyjs file1.js file2.js --mangle-props --name-cache /tmp/cache.json -o part1.js
uglifyjs file3.js file4.js --mangle-props --name-cache /tmp/cache.json -o part2.js
Now, part1.js
and part2.js
will be consistent with each other in terms
of mangled property names.
Using the name cache is not necessary if you compress all your files in a
single call to UglifyJS.
Mangling unquoted names (--mangle-props keep_quoted
)
Using quoted property name (o["foo"]
) reserves the property name (foo
)
so that it is not mangled throughout the entire script even when used in an
unquoted style (o.foo
). Example:
$ echo 'var o={"foo":1, bar:3}; o.foo += o.bar; console.log(o.foo);' | uglifyjs --mangle-props keep_quoted -mc
var o={foo:1,a:3};o.foo+=o.a,console.log(o.foo);
Debugging property name mangling
You can also pass --mangle-props debug
in order to mangle property names
without completely obscuring them. For example the property o.foo
would mangle to o._$foo$_
with this option. This allows property mangling
of a large codebase while still being able to debug the code and identify
where mangling is breaking things.
You can also pass a custom suffix using --mangle-props debug=XYZ
. This would then
mangle o.foo
to o._$foo$XYZ_
. You can change this each time you compile a
script to identify how a property got mangled. One technique is to pass a
random number on every compile to simulate mangling changing with different
inputs (e.g. as you update the input script with new properties), and to help
identify mistakes like writing mangled keys to storage.
Compressor options
You need to pass --compress
(-c
) to enable the compressor. Optionally
you can pass a comma-separated list of options. Options are in the form
foo=bar
, or just foo
(the latter implies a boolean option that you want
to set true
; it's effectively a shortcut for foo=true
).
-
sequences
(default: true) -- join consecutive simple statements using the
comma operator. May be set to a positive integer to specify the maximum number
of consecutive comma sequences that will be generated. If this option is set to
true
then the default sequences
limit is 200
. Set option to false
or 0
to disable. The smallest sequences
length is 2
. A sequences
value of 1
is grandfathered to be equivalent to true
and as such means 200
. On rare
occasions the default sequences limit leads to very slow compress times in which
case a value of 20
or less is recommended.
-
properties
-- rewrite property access using the dot notation, for
example foo["bar"] → foo.bar
-
dead_code
-- remove unreachable code
-
drop_debugger
-- remove debugger;
statements
-
unsafe
(default: false) -- apply "unsafe" transformations (discussion below)
-
unsafe_comps
(default: false) -- Reverse <
and <=
to >
and >=
to
allow improved compression. This might be unsafe when an at least one of two
operands is an object with computed values due the use of methods like get
,
or valueOf
. This could cause change in execution order after operands in the
comparison are switching. Compression only works if both comparisons
and
unsafe_comps
are both set to true.
-
unsafe_math
(default: false) -- optimize numerical expressions like
2 * x * 3
into 6 * x
, which may give imprecise floating point results.
-
unsafe_proto
(default: false) -- optimize expressions like
Array.prototype.slice.call(a)
into [].slice.call(a)
-
conditionals
-- apply optimizations for if
-s and conditional
expressions
-
comparisons
-- apply certain optimizations to binary nodes, for example:
!(a <= b) → a > b
(only when unsafe_comps
), attempts to negate binary
nodes, e.g. a = !b && !c && !d && !e → a=!(b||c||d||e)
etc.
-
evaluate
-- attempt to evaluate constant expressions
-
booleans
-- various optimizations for boolean context, for example !!a ? b : c → a ? b : c
-
loops
-- optimizations for do
, while
and for
loops when we can
statically determine the condition
-
unused
-- drop unreferenced functions and variables (simple direct variable
assignments do not count as references unless set to "keep_assign"
)
-
toplevel
-- drop unreferenced functions ("funcs"
) and/or variables ("vars"
)
in the toplevel scope (false
by default, true
to drop both unreferenced
functions and variables)
-
top_retain
-- prevent specific toplevel functions and variables from unused
removal (can be array, comma-separated, RegExp or function. Implies toplevel
)
-
hoist_funs
-- hoist function declarations
-
hoist_vars
(default: false) -- hoist var
declarations (this is false
by default because it seems to increase the size of the output in general)
-
if_return
-- optimizations for if/return and if/continue
-
join_vars
-- join consecutive var
statements
-
cascade
-- small optimization for sequences, transform x, x
into x
and x = something(), x
into x = something()
-
collapse_vars
-- Collapse single-use var
and const
definitions
when possible.
-
reduce_vars
-- Improve optimization on variables assigned with and
used as constant values.
-
warnings
-- display warnings when dropping unreachable code or unused
declarations etc.
-
negate_iife
-- negate "Immediately-Called Function Expressions"
where the return value is discarded, to avoid the parens that the
code generator would insert.
-
pure_getters
-- the default is false
. If you pass true
for
this, UglifyJS will assume that object property access
(e.g. foo.bar
or foo["bar"]
) doesn't have any side effects.
Specify "strict"
to treat foo.bar
as side-effect-free only when
foo
is certain to not throw, i.e. not null
or undefined
.
-
pure_funcs
-- default null
. You can pass an array of names and
UglifyJS will assume that those functions do not produce side
effects. DANGER: will not check if the name is redefined in scope.
An example case here, for instance var q = Math.floor(a/b)
. If
variable q
is not used elsewhere, UglifyJS will drop it, but will
still keep the Math.floor(a/b)
, not knowing what it does. You can
pass pure_funcs: [ 'Math.floor' ]
to let it know that this
function won't produce any side effect, in which case the whole
statement would get discarded. The current implementation adds some
overhead (compression will be slower).
-
drop_console
-- default false
. Pass true
to discard calls to
console.*
functions. If you wish to drop a specific function call
such as console.info
and/or retain side effects from function arguments
after dropping the function call then use pure_funcs
instead.
-
expression
-- default false
. Pass true
to preserve completion values
from terminal statements without return
, e.g. in bookmarklets.
-
keep_fargs
-- default true
. Prevents the
compressor from discarding unused function arguments. You need this
for code which relies on Function.length
.
-
keep_fnames
-- default false
. Pass true
to prevent the
compressor from discarding function names. Useful for code relying on
Function.prototype.name
. See also: the keep_fnames
mangle option.
-
passes
-- default 1
. Number of times to run compress with a maximum of 3.
In some cases more than one pass leads to further compressed code. Keep in
mind more passes will take more time.
-
keep_infinity
-- default false
. Pass true
to prevent Infinity
from
being compressed into 1/0
, which may cause performance issues on Chrome.
-
side_effects
-- default false
. Pass true
to potentially drop functions
marked as "pure". A function call is marked as "pure" if a comment annotation
/*@__PURE__*/
or /*#__PURE__*/
immediately precedes the call. For example:
/*@__PURE__*/foo()
;
The unsafe
option
It enables some transformations that might break code logic in certain
contrived cases, but should be fine for most code. You might want to try it
on your own code, it should reduce the minified size. Here's what happens
when this flag is on:
new Array(1, 2, 3)
or Array(1, 2, 3)
→ [ 1, 2, 3 ]
new Object()
→ {}
String(exp)
or exp.toString()
→ "" + exp
new Object/RegExp/Function/Error/Array (...)
→ we discard the new
typeof foo == "undefined"
→ foo === void 0
void 0
→ undefined
(if there is a variable named "undefined" in
scope; we do it because the variable name will be mangled, typically
reduced to a single character)
Conditional compilation
You can use the --define
(-d
) switch in order to declare global
variables that UglifyJS will assume to be constants (unless defined in
scope). For example if you pass --define DEBUG=false
then, coupled with
dead code removal UglifyJS will discard the following from the output:
if (DEBUG) {
console.log("debug stuff");
}
You can specify nested constants in the form of --define env.DEBUG=false
.
UglifyJS will warn about the condition being always false and about dropping
unreachable code; for now there is no option to turn off only this specific
warning, you can pass warnings=false
to turn off all warnings.
Another way of doing that is to declare your globals as constants in a
separate file and include it into the build. For example you can have a
build/defines.js
file with the following:
const DEBUG = false;
const PRODUCTION = true;
and build your code like this:
uglifyjs build/defines.js js/foo.js js/bar.js... -c
UglifyJS will notice the constants and, since they cannot be altered, it
will evaluate references to them to the value itself and drop unreachable
code as usual. The build will contain the const
declarations if you use
them. If you are targeting < ES6 environments which does not support const
,
using var
with reduce_vars
(enabled by default) should suffice.
Conditional compilation, API
You can also use conditional compilation via the programmatic API. With the difference that the
property name is global_defs
and is a compressor property:
uglifyJS.minify(fs.readFileSync("input.js", "utf8"), {
compress: {
dead_code: true,
global_defs: {
DEBUG: false
}
}
});
Beautifier options
The code generator tries to output shortest code possible by default. In
case you want beautified output, pass --beautify
(-b
). Optionally you
can pass additional arguments that control the code output:
beautify
(default true
) -- whether to actually beautify the output.
Passing -b
will set this to true, but you might need to pass -b
even
when you want to generate minified code, in order to specify additional
arguments, so you can use -b beautify=false
to override it.indent_level
(default 4)indent_start
(default 0) -- prefix all lines by that many spacesquote_keys
(default false
) -- pass true
to quote all keys in literal
objectsspace_colon
(default true
) -- insert a space after the colon signsascii_only
(default false
) -- escape Unicode characters in strings and
regexps (affects directives with non-ascii characters becoming invalid)inline_script
(default false
) -- escape the slash in occurrences of
</script
in stringswidth
(default 80) -- only takes effect when beautification is on, this
specifies an (orientative) line width that the beautifier will try to
obey. It refers to the width of the line text (excluding indentation).
It doesn't work very well currently, but it does make the code generated
by UglifyJS more readable.max_line_len
(default 32000) -- maximum line length (for uglified code)bracketize
(default false
) -- always insert brackets in if
, for
,
do
, while
or with
statements, even if their body is a single
statement.semicolons
(default true
) -- separate statements with semicolons. If
you pass false
then whenever possible we will use a newline instead of a
semicolon, leading to more readable output of uglified code (size before
gzip could be smaller; size after gzip insignificantly larger).preamble
(default null
) -- when passed it must be a string and
it will be prepended to the output literally. The source map will
adjust for this text. Can be used to insert a comment containing
licensing information, for example.quote_style
(default 0
) -- preferred quote style for strings (affects
quoted property names and directives as well):
0
-- prefers double quotes, switches to single quotes when there are
more double quotes in the string itself.1
-- always use single quotes2
-- always use double quotes3
-- always use the original quotes
keep_quoted_props
(default false
) -- when turned on, prevents stripping
quotes from property names in object literals.ecma
(default 5
) -- set output printing mode. This will only change the
output in direct control of the beautifier. Non-compatible features in the
abstract syntax tree will still be outputted as is.
You can pass --comments
to retain certain comments in the output. By
default it will keep JSDoc-style comments that contain "@preserve",
"@license" or "@cc_on" (conditional compilation for IE). You can pass
--comments all
to keep all the comments, or a valid JavaScript regexp to
keep only comments that match this regexp. For example --comments /^!/
will keep comments like /*! Copyright Notice */
.
Note, however, that there might be situations where comments are lost. For
example:
function f() {
function g() {
}
return something();
}
Even though it has "@preserve", the comment will be lost because the inner
function g
(which is the AST node to which the comment is attached to) is
discarded by the compressor as not referenced.
The safest comments where to place copyright information (or other info that
needs to be kept in the output) are comments attached to toplevel nodes.
Support for the SpiderMonkey AST
UglifyJS has its own abstract syntax tree format; for
practical reasons
we can't easily change to using the SpiderMonkey AST internally. However,
UglifyJS now has a converter which can import a SpiderMonkey AST.
For example Acorn is a super-fast parser that produces a
SpiderMonkey AST. It has a small CLI utility that parses one file and dumps
the AST in JSON on the standard output. To use UglifyJS to mangle and
compress that:
acorn file.js | uglifyjs -p spidermonkey -m -c
The -p spidermonkey
option tells UglifyJS that all input files are not
JavaScript, but JS code described in SpiderMonkey AST in JSON. Therefore we
don't use our own parser in this case, but just transform that AST into our
internal AST.
Use Acorn for parsing
More for fun, I added the -p acorn
option which will use Acorn to do all
the parsing. If you pass this option, UglifyJS will require("acorn")
.
Acorn is really fast (e.g. 250ms instead of 380ms on some 650K code), but
converting the SpiderMonkey tree that Acorn produces takes another 150ms so
in total it's a bit more than just using UglifyJS's own parser.
API Reference
Assuming installation via NPM, you can load UglifyJS in your application
like this:
var UglifyJS = require("uglify-es");
There is a single toplevel function, minify(files, options)
, which will
performs all the steps in a configurable manner.
Example:
var result = UglifyJS.minify("var b = function() {};");
console.log(result.code);
console.log(result.error);
You can also compress multiple files:
var result = UglifyJS.minify({
"file1.js": "var a = function() {};",
"file2.js": "var b = function() {};"
});
console.log(result.code);
To generate a source map:
var result = UglifyJS.minify({"file1.js": "var a = function() {};"}, {
sourceMap: {
filename: "out.js",
url: "out.js.map"
}
});
console.log(result.code);
console.log(result.map);
Note that the source map is not saved in a file, it's just returned in
result.map
. The value passed for sourceMap.url
is only used to set
//# sourceMappingURL=out.js.map
in result.code
. The value of
filename
is only used to set file
attribute (see the spec)
in source map file.
You can set option sourceMap.url
to be "inline"
and source map will
be appended to code.
You can also specify sourceRoot property to be included in source map:
var result = UglifyJS.minify({"file1.js": "var a = function() {};"}, {
sourceMap: {
root: "http://example.com/src",
url: "out.js.map"
}
});
If you're compressing compiled JavaScript and have a source map for it, you
can use sourceMap.content
:
var result = UglifyJS.minify({"compiled.js": "compiled code"}, {
sourceMap: {
content: "content from compiled.js.map",
url: "minified.js.map"
}
});
If you're using the X-SourceMap
header instead, you can just omit sourceMap.url
.
Other options:
-
warnings
(default false
) — pass true
to display compressor warnings.
-
mangle
(default true
) — pass false
to skip mangling names, or pass
an object to specify mangling options (see below).
-
mangleProperties
(default false
) — pass an object to specify custom
mangle property options.
-
output
(default null
) — pass an object if you wish to specify
additional output options. The defaults are optimized
for best compression.
-
compress
(default {}
) — pass false
to skip compressing entirely.
Pass an object to specify custom compressor options.
-
parse
(default {}) — pass an object if you wish to specify some
additional parser options.
mangle
-
reserved
- pass an array of identifiers that should be excluded from mangling
-
toplevel
— mangle names declared in the toplevel scope (disabled by
default).
-
eval
— mangle names visible in scopes where eval or with are used
(disabled by default).
-
keep_fnames
-- default false
. Pass true
to not mangle
function names. Useful for code relying on Function.prototype.name
.
See also: the keep_fnames
compress option.
Examples:
var globalVar;
function funcName(firstLongName, anotherLongName)
{
var myVariable = firstLongName + anotherLongName;
}
var code = fs.readFileSync("test.js", "utf8");
UglifyJS.minify(code).code;
UglifyJS.minify(code, { mangle: { reserved: ['firstLongName'] } }).code;
UglifyJS.minify(code, { mangle: { toplevel: true } }).code;
mangle.properties options
regex
— Pass a RegExp to only mangle certain nameskeep_quoted
— Only mangle unquoted property namesdebug
— Mangle names with the original name still present. Defaults to false
.
Pass an empty string to enable, or a non-empty string to set the suffix.