Quickstart¶
For single invocations, there is the htmlmin.minify
method. It takes input html as a string for its first argument and returns
minified html. It accepts multiple different options that allow you to tune the
amount of minification being done, with the defaults being the safest available
options:
>>> import htmlmin
>>> input_html = '''
<body style="background-color: tomato;">
<h1> htmlmin rocks</h1>
<pre>
and rolls
</pre>
</body>'''
>>> htmlmin.minify(input_html)
u' <body style="background-color: tomato;"> <h1> htmlmin rocks</h1> <pre>\n and rolls\n </pre> </body>'
>>> print htmlmin.minify(input_html)
<body style="background-color: tomato;"> <h1> htmlmin rocks</h1> <pre>
and rolls
</pre> </body>
If there is a chunk of html which you do not want minified, put a pre
attribute on an HTML tag that wraps it. htmlmin will leave the contents of the
tag alone and will remove the pre
attribute before it is output:
>>> import htmlmin
>>> input_html = '''<span> minified </span><span pre> not minified </span>'''
>>> htmlmin.minify(input_html)
u'<span> minified </span><span> not minified </span>'
The minify
function works well for one off
minifications. However, if you are going to minify several pieces of HTML, the
Minifier
class is provided. It works similarly, but
allows for persistence of options between invocations and recycles the internal
data structures used for minification.
Command Line¶
htmlmin is invoked by running:
htmlmin input.html output.html
If no output file is specified, it will print to stdout
. If not input
specified, it reads form stdin
. Help with options can be retrieved at
any time by running htmlmin -h:
htmlmin -h
usage: htmlmin [-h] [-c] [-s] [--remove-all-empty-space] [-H] [-k] [-p [TAG [TAG ...]]] [-e ENCODING]
[INPUT] [OUTPUT]
Minify HTML
positional arguments:
INPUT File path to html file to minify. Defaults to stdin.
OUTPUT File path to output to. Defaults to stdout.
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-c, --remove-comments
When set, comments will be removed. They can be kept on an individual basis
by starting them with a '!': <!--! comment -->. The '!' will be removed from
the final output. If you want a '!' as the leading character of your comment,
put two of them: <!--!! comment -->.
-s, --remove-empty-space
When set, this removes empty space betwen tags in certain cases.
Specifically, it will remove empty space if and only if there a newline
character occurs within the space. Thus, code like
'<span>x</span> <span>y</span>' will be left alone, but code such as
' ...
</head>
<body>
...'
will become '...</head><body>...'. Note that this CAN break your
html if you spread two inline tags over two lines. Use with caution.
--remove-all-empty-space
When set, this removes ALL empty space betwen tags. WARNING: this can and
likely will cause unintended consequences. For instance, '<i>X</i> <i>Y</i>'
will become '<i>X</i><i>Y</i>'. Putting whitespace along with other text will
avoid this problem. Only use if you are confident in the result. Whitespace is
not removed from inside of tags, thus '<span> </span>' will be left alone.
-H, --in-head If you are parsing only a fragment of HTML, and the fragment occurs in the
head of the document, setting this will remove some extra whitespace.
-k, --keep-pre-attr HTMLMin supports the propietary attribute 'pre' that can be added to elements
to prevent minification. This attribute is removed by default. Set this flag to
keep the 'pre' attributes in place.
-a PRE_ATTR, --pre-attr PRE_ATTR
The attribute htmlmin looks for to find blocks of HTML that it should not
minify. This attribute will be removed from the HTML unless '-k' is
specified. Defaults to 'pre'.
-p [TAG [TAG ...]], --pre-tags [TAG [TAG ...]]
By default, the contents of 'pre', and 'textarea' tags are left unminified.
You can specify different tags using the --pre-tags option. 'script' and 'style'
tags are always left unmininfied.
-e ENCODING, --encoding ENCODING
Encoding to read and write with. Default 'utf-8'.