Bundling And Minifying In ASP.NET Core Applications

After installing the extension, you select all of the specific files that you want to include within a bundle and use the "Bundle and Minify Files" option from the extension.

This will prompt you to name your bundle and choose a location to save it at. You'll then notice a new file within your project called bundleconfig.json which looks like the following.

Note

The order in which the files are selected, will determine the order that they appear in, within the bundle. So, if you have any dependencies, ensure that you take that into account.

Now, the previous step will simply bundle your files. If you want to minify the bundle, then you need to indicate this within the bundleconfig.json file. Simply add a minify block like the following to your existing bundle to indicate that you want it minified.

Automating Bundles (via the extension)

Finally, if you want to automate this process, you can schedule a task to run whenever your application is built, to ensure that your bundles reflect any changes within your application.

To do this, you'll need to do the following.

• Open the Task Runner Explorer (via Tools > Task Runner Explorer).
• Right-click on the "Update All Files" option below JSON file name.
• Select your preferred binding from the "Bindings" context menu.
  
  
  

Using dotnet bundle

Since there are quite a few developers out there that are big command-line fans, I couldn't leave you folks out.

The ASP.NET Core RTM release introduced BundlerMinifier.Core, a new Bundling and Minification tool that can be easily integrated into existing ASP.NET Core applications and doesn't require any external extensions or script files.

Using BundlerMinifer.Core and Configuring Your Bundles

To use this tool, simply add a reference to BundlerMinifier.Core within the tools section of your existing project.json file, as seen below.

After adding the tool, you'll need to add a bundleconfig.json file in your project that will be used to configure the files that you wish to include within your bundles. A minimal configuration can be seen below.

Building Your Bundles

After your bundles have been configured, you can bundle and minify your existing files, using the following command.

dotnet bundle

Automating Your Bundles

The Bundling and Minification process can be automated as part of the build process by adding the "dotnet bundle" command in the precompile section of your existing project.json file.

Available Commands

You can see a list of all the available commands and their descriptions below.

• dotnet bundle - Executes the bundle command using the bundleconfig.json file to bundle and minify your specified files.
• dotnet bundle clean - Clears all of the existing output files from disk.
• dotnet bundle watch - Creates a watchers that will automatically run dotnet bundle whenever an existing input file from the bundleconfig.json configuration to bundle your files.
• dotnet bundle help - Displays all available help options and instructions for using the Command-Line Interface.

That's all there is to it.

While bundling and minification may be a bit different that you may have been accustomed to, it's going to be one of the smaller things that you have to worry about transitioning to this new modular ASP.NET Core world.

Regardless of the approach that you choose, bundling and minification can translate into smaller requests and quicker load times for your users; and as demonstrated here, it hardly takes any work at all.