minify-html

A Rust HTML minifier meticulously optimised for speed and effectiveness, with bindings for other languages.

• Advanced minification strategy beats other minifiers while being much faster.
• Uses SIMD searching, direct tries, and lookup tables.
• Handles invalid HTML, with extensive testing and fuzzing.
• Uses minify-js for super fast JS minification.

View the changelog to see the latest updates.

Performance

Comparison with html-minifier and minimize, run on the top web pages. See the breakdown here.

The onepass variant is even more optimised for speed. See its README for more details.

Compatibility and usage

CLI

Precompiled binaries are available for Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Get

Linux x64 | Linux ARM64 | macOS x64 | Windows x64

Use

Use the --help argument for more details.

minify-html --output /path/to/output.min.html --keep-closing-tags --minify-css /path/to/src.html

To quickly parallel process a batch of files in place:

minify-html --keep-closing-tags --minify-css /path/to/**/*.html

Rust

Get

[dependencies]
minify-html = "0.11.1"

Use

Check out the docs for API and usage examples.

Deno

• Package: https://wilsonl.in/minify-html/deno/0.11.1/index.js
• Binding: WASM
• Platforms: All

Use

import init, {minify} from "https://wilsonl.in/minify-html/deno/0.11.1/index.js";

const encoder = new TextEncoder();
const decoder = new TextDecoder();

await init();

const minified = decoder.decode(minify(encoder.encode("<p>  Hello, world!  </p>"), { keep_spaces_between_attributes: true, keep_comments: true }));

All Cfg fields are available as snake_case properties on the object provided as the second argument; if any are not set, they default to false.

Node.js

• Package: @minify-html/node
• Binding: Neon
• Platforms: Linux (ARM64 and x64), macOS (x64), Windows (x64); Node.js 8.6.0 and higher

Get

Using npm:

npm i @minify-html/node

Using Yarn:

yarn add @minify-html/node

Use

TypeScript definitions are available.

import { Buffer } from "node:buffer";
import minifyHtml from "@minify-html/node";
// Or `const minifyHtml = require("@minify-html/node")` if not using TS/ESM.

const minified = minifyHtml.minify(Buffer.from("<p>  Hello, world!  </p>"), { keep_spaces_between_attributes: true, keep_comments: true });

All Cfg fields are available as snake_case properties on the object provided as the second argument; if any are not set, they default to false.

Java

• Package: in.wilsonl.minifyhtml
• Binding: JNI
• Platforms: Linux, macOS, Windows; Java 7 and higher

Get

Add as a Maven dependency:

<dependency>
  <groupId>in.wilsonl.minifyhtml</groupId>
  <artifactId>minify-html</artifactId>
  <version>0.11.1</version>
</dependency>

Use

import in.wilsonl.minifyhtml.Configuration;
import in.wilsonl.minifyhtml.MinifyHtml;

Configuration cfg = new Configuration.Builder()
    .setKeepHtmlAndHeadOpeningTags(true)
    .setMinifyCss(true)
    .build();

String minified = MinifyHtml.minify("<p>  Hello, world!  </p>", cfg);

All Cfg fields are available as camelCase setter methods on the Builder; if any are not set, they default to false.

Python

• Package: minify-html
• Binding: PyO3
• Platforms: Linux (ARM64 and x64), macOS (x64), Windows (x64); Python 3.8 to 3.10

Get

Add the PyPI project as a dependency and install it using pip or pipenv.

Use

import minify_html

minified = minify_html.minify("<p>  Hello, world!  </p>", minify_js=True, remove_processing_instructions=True)

All Cfg fields are available as Python keyword arguments; if any are omitted, they default to False.

Ruby

• Package: minify_html
• Binding: Rutie
• Platforms: Linux, macOS; Ruby 2.5 and higher

Get

Add the library as a dependency to Gemfile or *.gemspec.

Use

require 'minify_html'

print MinifyHtml.minify("<p>  Hello, world!  </p>", { :keep_spaces_between_attributes => true, :minify_js => true })

All Cfg fields are available; if any are omitted, they default to false.

WASM

• Package: @minify-html/wasm
• Binding: WASM
• Platforms: All

A bundler may be required to use the WebAssembly module, see this for more details.

Use

import init, {minify} from "@minify-html/wasm";

const encoder = new TextEncoder();
const decoder = new TextDecoder();

await init();

const minified = decoder.decode(minify(encoder.encode("<p>  Hello, world!  </p>"), { keep_spaces_between_attributes: true, keep_comments: true }));

All Cfg fields are available as snake_case properties on the object provided as the second argument; if any are not set, they default to false.

Minification

Note that some of the minification done can result in HTML that will not pass validation, but remain interpreted and rendered correctly by the browser; essentially, the laxness of the browser is taken advantage of for better minification. To prevent this, refer to these configuration options:

• do_not_minify_doctype
• ensure_spec_compliant_unquoted_attribute_values
• keep_spaces_between_attributes

Whitespace

minify-html has advanced context-aware whitespace minification that does things such as:

• Leave whitespace untouched in pre and code, which are whitespace sensitive.
• Trim and collapse whitespace in content tags, as whitespace is collapsed anyway when rendered.
• Remove whitespace in layout tags, which allows the use of inline layouts while keeping formatted code.

Methods

There are three whitespace minification methods. When processing text content, minify-html chooses which ones to use depending on the containing element.

<p>↵
··The·quick·brown·fox↵
··jumps·over·the·lazy↵
··dog.↵
</p>

<p>·The·quick·brown·fox·jumps·over·the·lazy·dog.·</p>

<ul>↵
··<li>A</li>↵
··<li>B</li>↵
··<li>C</li>↵
</ul>

<ul>↵
··<li>A</li><li>B</li><li>C</li>↵
</ul>

<p>↵
··Hey,·I·<em>just</em>·found↵
··out·about·this·<strong>cool</strong>·website!↵
··<sup>[1]</sup>↵
</p>

<p>Hey,·I·<em>just</em>·found↵
··out·about·this·<strong>cool</strong>·website!↵
··<sup>[1]</sup></p>

Element types

minify-html assumes HTML and SVG elements are used in specific ways, based on standards and best practices. By making these assumptions, it can apply optimal whitespace minification strategies. If these assumptions do not hold, consider adjusting the HTML source or turning off whitespace minification.

<p>↵
··Hey,·I·<em>just</em>·found↵
··out·about·this·<strong>cool</strong>·website!↵
··<sup>[1]</sup>↵
</p>

<p>Hey,·I·<em>just</em>·found·out·about·this·<strong>cool</strong>·website!·<sup>[1]</sup></p>

<ul>↵
··<li>A</li>↵
··<li>B</li>↵
··<li>C</li>↵
</ul>

<ul><li>A</li><li>B</li><li>C</li></ul>

<li>↵
··<article>↵
····<section></section>↵
····<section></section>↵
··</article>↵
</li>

<li><article><section></section><section></section></article></li>

Tags

Optional opening and closing tags are removed.

Attributes

Any entities in attribute values are decoded, and then the shortest representation of the value is calculated and used:

• Double quoted, with any " encoded.
• Single quoted, with any ' encoded.
• Unquoted, with "/' first character (if applicable), any >, and any whitespace encoded.

Attributes have their whitespace (after any decoding) trimmed and collapsed when possible.

Boolean attribute values are removed. Some other attributes are completely removed if their value is empty or the default value after any processing.

type attributes on script tags with a value equaling a JavaScript MIME type are removed.

If an attribute value is empty after any processing, everything but the name is completely removed (i.e. no =), as an empty attribute is implicitly the same as an attribute with an empty string value.

Spaces are removed between attributes when possible.

Entities

Entities are decoded if they're valid and shorter or equal in length when decoded. UTF-8 sequences that have a shorter entity representation are encoded.

Numeric entities that do not refer to a valid Unicode Scalar Value are replaced with the replacement character.

Encoding is avoided when possible; for example, < are only encoded in content if they are followed by a valid tag name character. If necessary, the shortest entity representation is chosen.

Comments

Comments are removed.

Ignored

Bangs, processing instructions, and empty elements are not removed as it is assumed there is a special reason for their declaration.

Parsing

minify-html can process any HTML, handling all possible syntax (including invalid ones) gracefully like browsers. See Parsing.md for more details.

Issues and contributions

Pull requests and any contributions welcome!

If minify-html did something unexpected, misunderstood some syntax, or incorrectly kept/removed some code, raise an issue with some relevant code that can be used to reproduce and investigate the issue.