About

What is static-pages-bundler

This is a simple library that creates a bundle of a simple web page that uses classic <link ...> and <script ...> way to connect a bunch of CSS and JS files to the HTML template.

An entry point is your index.html. All the connected CSS, JS found by their paths in the index.html. Then the data parsed and compressed into three files: index.html, bundle.css and bundle.js.

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static-pages-bundler uses html-minifier, uglify-es and uglifycss as dependencies.

! Important notes

For now static-pages-bundler tested only on macOS Movaje v10.14.4, Windows 7 Enterprise and Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS.

Basic usage

Video tutorial

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Installation

To use the library you will need to have node.js and git installed on your system.

To install static-pages-bundler globally, simply run from terminal:

  $ npm install -g static-pages-bundler

You may remove the -g flag if you want to install static-pages-bundler as a dev dependency. So, the command will be

  $ npm i --save-dev static-pages-bundler

Bundling process

1. Create a dist folder you're going to run the script from. You may skip the step, but in the case, you will have to run static-pages-bundler using sudo to give the bundler permissions to create that folder structure for you (running npm libs with sudo is never recommended with any third party lib).

2. In your HTML template setup the entry points for the bundler:

   2.1. Wrap your <link ...> elements that have CSS files imports via CSS comments:

       <!-- Bundler CSS start -->
         ... your <link ...> elements
       <!-- Bundler CSS end -->

   2.2. Wrap your <script ...> elements that have JS scripts via JS comments:

       <!-- Bundler JS start -->
         ... your <script ...> elements
       <!-- Bundler JS end -->

   ! Its important to use exact same comment lines

       <!-- Bundler CSS start -->,
       <!-- Bundler CSS end -->,
       <!-- Bundler JS start --> and
       <!-- Bundler JS end -->.

   ! Also, please use only one entry point for CSS and one for JS. The library doesn't work with multiple entry points for now.

3. Using terminal go to the location where your index.html located and run:

     $ static-pages-bundler

   You can use the next shortcut instead of full static-pages-bundler:

     $ spb

   Also, if the name of your HTML template is not index.html you can specify it in the command eg:

     $ spb <your-html-template>

4. As a result: Your HTML will be added to dist/<filename>.html. Your CSS will be compressed to dist/bundle.css. Your JS will be compressed to dist/bundle.js. All your <link and <script> lines that were wrapped info CSS and JS comment lines will be replaced with <link rel="stylesheet" href="bundle.css"> and <script src="bundle.js" defer></script>.

5. If you use any assets, then copy folder with them into a place where your new bundle will have access (same relative path as they had previously). static-pages-bundler doesn't change any links/paths inside your code, so please, make sure all the paths work (paths to images, icons, fonts, etc.).