Rich client application using tonnes of Javascript files are relatively new to .NET world. Most of the ASP.NET based applications rely on view creation in aspx and code behind files. User friendly client interactive applications forces the designers to move view creation and interaction logic to client browser. Earlier flash and Silverlight played a very good job in rich client Web application. Now world is moving towards HTML 5 and retirement of flash and Silverlight are nearing. As HTML 5 is becoming standard, .NET world forced to adopt it and needs to use JavaScript based thick client as front end. Single Page Application using ASP.NET,Knockout.js,upshot.js etc are getting popular. As more and more logic are added in client side through huge number of Javascript files, Handling of JavaScript files pose a major challange. If application is SaaS based cloud application, question becomes more complex. There are few tips which will be helpful to handle JavaScript resources in ASP.NET based cloud application.
1. Reduce the number of JavaScript files - Always include the really needed Javascript file for a particular page. It is unwise to globally include all Javascript for all the pages. It would be a nice architecture if you load the required Javascript files for a (ASP.NET) page/module request from page to JS files mapping which is stored in common XML file. By this way, you can centralize the needed JavaScript for each page in one place. It will improve the maintainability of the code.
2. Minimize the size - Normal JavaScript file contains lot of page breaks, spaces, comments etc . They are necessary for the maintainability and debugging. but it increases the size of network transfer and performance of the application. Best way is to minimize the Javascript files by removing unnecessary spaces,comments and line breaks. You can write your own program to trim those while application on load. Crockford created Jsmin library for this purpose in C language. There are lots of C# version of the library available in open source. Lot of other open source library also available. These Minifier can reduce the size of the Javascript to half!.
Microsoft AJAX minifier is a command line tool which can minimize the Javascript file. It is possible to add this tool in visual studio under External tool. So that you can open a javascript file and run the tool from visual studio menu to minimize the files.
3. Bundle the JavaScript files - It is common to use large number of small sized JavaScript files in the application. It improves the maintainability and debugging. But browser has to make request for each JavaScript files. As number of request increases, browser round trip to server also increases. It can reduce the performance. It is always better to combine all the requested JavaScript files to one or couple of files and push those combined files to client. As specified in the previous point, if you have mapping between ASP.NET page name and JavaScript files,Based on requested page, you can get list of required JavaScript files , minimize each of them and combine the minimized file and return the combined file to client.
4. Version the JavaScript Resources - Always append some unique identifier with the JavaScript It will avoid the browser cache problem. Some times, the changes in JavaScript files may not be downloaded to client browser because of older cached version of same file. By appending some Unique Identifier, especially build version, whenever new build happens, browser will be prompted to download newer version of the file. By this way, Your support team need not instruct the customers to clear the browser cache during every release.
5. Ability to use debug version - Make sure to turn off/on the minification and bundling option from web.config switch. It will be practically impossible to debug minified and bundled JavaScript. You need unminified full version of JavaScript file for debugging purpose. When the code is moved to production, Javascript resources should be minified and bundled.
6. Compress the resources in IIS - Use inherant feature of IIS to compress the static resource content like Javascript files. To enable the compression, follow the steps
1. Open IIS Manager
2. Choose the site of interest.
3. Click Compression icon in right side
4. Check "Enable Static Content Compression"
This can reduce the network related traffic considerably.
7. Cache the Resources - Minification and bundling are really expensive jobs. Whenever you do minification and bundling, do it one time and cache the resources. Later on, retrieve the resources from cache. These files can be created during first request or prebuilt files can be stored and cached before application access. Where to store the bundled and minified resources ? It is not a good idea to store the files in same virtual directory. If you store it in different folder or in memory , How to render to client.
System.Web.Hosting class in .NET provides VirtualPathProvider class.
The VirtualPathProvider class provides a set of methods for implementing a virtual file system for a Web application. In a virtual file system, the files and directories are managed by a data store other than the file system provided by the server's operating system. For example, you can use a virtual file system to store content in a SQL Server database. You can customize this functionality so that you can store the files in altogether different folder in machine and can map the virtual path to the folder.
8. Synchronize data in all load balanced servers - If you use load balanced server, you can use separate server to service resources like css,images and JavaScript. Otherwise Make sure to update the minimized and bundled files in all the servers. It is good to make this process during build process instead of run time process.
Handling Bundling and Minification - ASP.NET 4.5 Way
Once innovative concepts and frameworks are out in the market, Microsoft has very good history of integrating into .NET in a developer friendly minimal coding style. Bundling and minification of the resource are not exception Manual handling of bundling and minification are discussed earlier. ASP.NET 4.5 included this feature as part of framework!. This functionality can be achieved by minimal coding in ASP.NET 4.5.
Here is the usual way of including the JavaScript files.
1. Reduce the number of JavaScript files - Always include the really needed Javascript file for a particular page. It is unwise to globally include all Javascript for all the pages. It would be a nice architecture if you load the required Javascript files for a (ASP.NET) page/module request from page to JS files mapping which is stored in common XML file. By this way, you can centralize the needed JavaScript for each page in one place. It will improve the maintainability of the code.
2. Minimize the size - Normal JavaScript file contains lot of page breaks, spaces, comments etc . They are necessary for the maintainability and debugging. but it increases the size of network transfer and performance of the application. Best way is to minimize the Javascript files by removing unnecessary spaces,comments and line breaks. You can write your own program to trim those while application on load. Crockford created Jsmin library for this purpose in C language. There are lots of C# version of the library available in open source. Lot of other open source library also available. These Minifier can reduce the size of the Javascript to half!.
Microsoft AJAX minifier is a command line tool which can minimize the Javascript file. It is possible to add this tool in visual studio under External tool. So that you can open a javascript file and run the tool from visual studio menu to minimize the files.
3. Bundle the JavaScript files - It is common to use large number of small sized JavaScript files in the application. It improves the maintainability and debugging. But browser has to make request for each JavaScript files. As number of request increases, browser round trip to server also increases. It can reduce the performance. It is always better to combine all the requested JavaScript files to one or couple of files and push those combined files to client. As specified in the previous point, if you have mapping between ASP.NET page name and JavaScript files,Based on requested page, you can get list of required JavaScript files , minimize each of them and combine the minimized file and return the combined file to client.
4. Version the JavaScript Resources - Always append some unique identifier with the JavaScript It will avoid the browser cache problem. Some times, the changes in JavaScript files may not be downloaded to client browser because of older cached version of same file. By appending some Unique Identifier, especially build version, whenever new build happens, browser will be prompted to download newer version of the file. By this way, Your support team need not instruct the customers to clear the browser cache during every release.
5. Ability to use debug version - Make sure to turn off/on the minification and bundling option from web.config switch. It will be practically impossible to debug minified and bundled JavaScript. You need unminified full version of JavaScript file for debugging purpose. When the code is moved to production, Javascript resources should be minified and bundled.
6. Compress the resources in IIS - Use inherant feature of IIS to compress the static resource content like Javascript files. To enable the compression, follow the steps
1. Open IIS Manager
2. Choose the site of interest.
3. Click Compression icon in right side
4. Check "Enable Static Content Compression"
This can reduce the network related traffic considerably.
7. Cache the Resources - Minification and bundling are really expensive jobs. Whenever you do minification and bundling, do it one time and cache the resources. Later on, retrieve the resources from cache. These files can be created during first request or prebuilt files can be stored and cached before application access. Where to store the bundled and minified resources ? It is not a good idea to store the files in same virtual directory. If you store it in different folder or in memory , How to render to client.
System.Web.Hosting class in .NET provides VirtualPathProvider class.
The VirtualPathProvider class provides a set of methods for implementing a virtual file system for a Web application. In a virtual file system, the files and directories are managed by a data store other than the file system provided by the server's operating system. For example, you can use a virtual file system to store content in a SQL Server database. You can customize this functionality so that you can store the files in altogether different folder in machine and can map the virtual path to the folder.
8. Synchronize data in all load balanced servers - If you use load balanced server, you can use separate server to service resources like css,images and JavaScript. Otherwise Make sure to update the minimized and bundled files in all the servers. It is good to make this process during build process instead of run time process.
Once innovative concepts and frameworks are out in the market, Microsoft has very good history of integrating into .NET in a developer friendly minimal coding style. Bundling and minification of the resource are not exception Manual handling of bundling and minification are discussed earlier. ASP.NET 4.5 included this feature as part of framework!. This functionality can be achieved by minimal coding in ASP.NET 4.5.
Here is the usual way of including the JavaScript files.
<head runat="server">
<title></title>
<script src="../../Scripts/WebForms/DetailsView.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="../../Scripts/WebForms/Focus.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="../../Scripts/WebForms/GridView.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="../../Scripts/WebForms/Menu.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="../../Scripts/WebForms/MenuStandards.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="../../Scripts/WebForms/SmartNav.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="../../Scripts/WebForms/TreeView.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="../../Scripts/WebForms/WebForms.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="../../Scripts/WebForms/WebParts.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="../../Scripts/WebForms/WebUIValidation.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<asp:placeholder runat="server">
</asp:placeholder>
</div>
</form>
</body>
This code will make multiple JavaScript file request from client.Fiddler trace will show as below
You can see 10 different request from browser. Apart from making multiple trips, total amount of data transferred is around 160 kb. Think about the scenario in which browser made single request and gets lesser size of the returned data. That will give very good performance improvement.
Now ASP.NET 4.5 provides inbuilt support for bundling and minification of files. The core functionality of bundling and minification is found in System.Web.Optimization namespace. This feature is automatically included .
If you create the ASP.NET web form project, Use the following steps to achieve the bundling and minification functionality.
Create the Bundle
You can see the bundle creation code in BundleConfig class in the App_Start folder. The following code shows the bundle creation. You can create as many bundle as you want based on the need.This will help you to avoid unnecessary includes of unwanted JS files. Default new project created from visual studio has code to create these 3 bundles.
1.WebFormJs
2. MsAjaxJs
3. Modernizr
public class BundleConfig
{
// For more information on Bundling, visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=254726
public static void RegisterBundles(BundleCollection bundles)
{
bundles.Add(new ScriptBundle("~/bundles/WebFormsJs").Include(
"~/Scripts/WebForms/WebForms.js",
"~/Scripts/WebForms/WebUIValidation.js",
"~/Scripts/WebForms/MenuStandards.js",
"~/Scripts/WebForms/Focus.js",
"~/Scripts/WebForms/GridView.js",
"~/Scripts/WebForms/DetailsView.js",
"~/Scripts/WebForms/TreeView.js",
"~/Scripts/WebForms/WebParts.js"));
bundles.Add(new ScriptBundle("~/bundles/MsAjaxJs").Include(
"~/Scripts/WebForms/MsAjax/MicrosoftAjax.js",
"~/Scripts/WebForms/MsAjax/MicrosoftAjaxApplicationServices.js",
"~/Scripts/WebForms/MsAjax/MicrosoftAjaxTimer.js",
"~/Scripts/WebForms/MsAjax/MicrosoftAjaxWebForms.js"));
// Use the Development version of Modernizr to develop with and learn from. Then, when you’re
// ready for production, use the build tool at http://modernizr.com to pick only the tests you need
bundles.Add(new ScriptBundle("~/bundles/modernizr").Include(
"~/Scripts/modernizr-*"));
}
Register the Bundle
Registering the bundle happens in the Application_Start method in the Global.asax file.
void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// Code that runs on application startup
BundleConfig.RegisterBundles(BundleTable.Bundles);
AuthConfig.RegisterOpenAuth();
}
Use the Bundle
Here is the syntax about how to use it.
<head runat="server">
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<form id="form1" runat="server">
<div>
<asp:PlaceHolder runat="server">
<%: Scripts.Render("~/bundles/WebFormsJs") %>
</asp:PlaceHolder>
</div>
</form>
</body>
</html>
Scripts.Render("~/bundles/WebFormsJs")
is the actual syntax which renders minified file.With the minification, fiddler trace will be like this
The number of request is Minimised to one. Apart from this the total size is just 60 KB. Application compressed and reduced the size to around 40%. This will make a big difference in internet scenario. Normal thick web client usually sends files in Megabytes and the benefit will be exponential in those cases!
The same technique can be used for CSS minification also.
Switching between Minified and Unminified Version
During development, We need unminified and unbundled files for debugging. But during release, we may need bundled & minified code. We can't have two different code for development and release. Microsoft handles this in nice way!. To enable minification, you need to do any one of the following.
Mark the Compilation - debug to true in the web.config file
<compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.5" />
or override the settings in global.asax with BundleTable.EnableOptimizations = true;
void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
BundleTable.EnableOptimizations = true;
// Code that runs on application startup
BundleConfig.RegisterBundles(BundleTable.Bundles);
AuthConfig.RegisterOpenAuth();
}
If you don't do the above, Application will automatically return unbundled & unminified file for debugging purpose even with the bundling Javascript syntax in aspx page!
Happy Coding!
