XML::Minifier - A configurable XML minifier.
The API (option names) is almost stabilized (but not fully) and can therefore still change a bit.
Here is the simplest way to use XML::Minifier :
use XML::Minifier; my $maxi = "<person> <name>tib </name> <level> 42 </level> <city> </city> </person>"; my $mini = minify($maxi);
But a typical use would include some parameters like this :
use XML::Minifier qw(minify); my $maxi = "<person> <name>tib </name> <level> 42 </level> <city> </city> </person>"; my $mini = minify($maxi, no_prolog => 1, aggressive => 1);
That will produce :
<person><name>tib</name><level>42</level><city/></person>
aggressive, destructive and insane are shortcuts that define a set of parameters.
You can set indivually with :
use XML::Minifier qw(minify); my $maxi = "<person> <name>tib </name> <level> 42 </level> <city> </city> </person>"; my $mini = minify($maxi, no_prolog => 1, aggressive => 1, keep_comments => 1, remove_indent => 1);
The code above means "minify this string with aggressive mode BUT keep comments and in addition remove indent".
Not every parameter has a keep_ neither a remove_, please see below for detailed list.
The minifier has a predefined set of options enabled by default.
They were decided by the author as relevant but you can disable individually with keep_ options.
In addition, the minifier will drop every blanks between the first level children. What you can find between first level children is not supposed to be meaningful data then we we can safely remove formatting here. For instance we can remove a carriage return between prolog and a processing instruction (or even inside a DTD).
In addition again, the minifier will smartly remove blanks between tags. By smart I mean that it will not remove blanks if we are in a leaf (more chances to be meaningful blanks) or if the node contains something that will persist (a not removed comment/cdata/PI, or a piece of text not empty). The meaningfulness of blanks can be given by a DTD. Then if a DTD is present and *protects some nodes*, we oviously respect this. But you can decide to change this behaviour with **ignore_dtd** option.
If there is no DTD (very often), we are blind and simply use the approach I just described above (keep blanks in leafs, remove blanks in nodes if all siblings contains only blanks).
Everything listed above is the default and should be perceived as almost lossyless minification in term of semantic (for humans).
It's not completely if you consider these things as data, but in this case you simply can't minify as you can't touch anything ;)
In addition, you could enable mode aggressive, destructive or insane to remove characters in the text nodes (sort of "cleaning") :
You can give various options:
Expand entities. An entity is like
&foo;
Process the xincludes. An xinclude is like
<xi:include href="inc.xml"/>
Remove blanks (spaces, carriage return, line feed...) in front of text nodes.
For instance
<tag> foo bar</tag>
will become
<tag>foo bar</tag>
It is aggressive and therefore lossy compression.
Remove blanks (spaces, carriage return, line feed...) at the end of text nodes.
<tag>foo bar </tag>
Remove spaces and tabs at the start of each line in text nodes. It's like removing indentation actually.
<tag> foo bar </tag>
Remove spaces and tabs at the end of each line in text nodes. It's like removing invisible things.
Remove (pseudo) empty text nodes (containing only spaces, carriage return, line feed...).
<tag> </tag>
<tag/>
Remove carriage returns and line feed everywhere (inside text !).
<tag>foobar</tag>
Keep comments, by default they are removed.
A comment is something like :
<!-- comment -->
Keep cdata, by default they are removed.
A CDATA is something like :
<![CDATA[ my cdata ]]>
Keep processing instructions.
A processing instruction is something like :
<?xml-stylesheet href="style.css"/>
Keep DTD.
When set, the minifier will ignore informations from the DTD (typically where blanks are meaningfull)
This option can be used with keep_dtd, you can decide to get informations from DTD then remove it (or the contrary).
Then I must repeat that ignore_dtd is NOT the contrary of keep_dtd
Do not put prolog (having no prolog is aggressive for XML readers).
Prolog is at the start of the XML file and look like this :
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
Specify version.
Specify encoding.
Enable aggressive mode. Enables options remove_blanks_starts, remove_blanks_end and remove_empty_text if they are not defined only. Other options still keep their value.
Enable destructive mode. Enable options remove_spaces_line_starts and remove_spaces_line_end if they are not defined only. Enable also aggressive mode. Other options still keep their value.
Enable insane mode. Enables options remove_cr_lf_everywhere and remove_spaces_everywhere if they are not defined only. Enable also destructive mode and aggressive mode. Other options still keep their value.
Copyright (C) Thibault DUPONCHELLE.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
Thibault DUPONCHELLE
To install XML::Minifier, copy and paste the appropriate command in to your terminal.
cpanm
cpanm XML::Minifier
CPAN shell
perl -MCPAN -e shell install XML::Minifier
For more information on module installation, please visit the detailed CPAN module installation guide.