How to Minify HTML code?

Question

My idea is to somehow minify HTML code in server-side, so client receive less bytes.

What do I mean with "minify"?

Not zipping. More like, for example, jQuery creators do with .min.js versions. In other words, I need to remove unnecessary white-spaces and new-lines, but I can't remove so much that presentation of HTML changes (for example remove white-space between actual words in paragraph).

Is there any tools that can do it? I know there is HtmlPurifier. Is it able to do it? Any other options?

P.S. Please don't offer regex'ies. I know that only Chuck Norris can parse HTML with them. =]

Answer 1

You can use the Pretty Diff tool: http://prettydiff.com/?m=minify&html It will also minify any CSS and JavaScript in the HTML code, and the minification occurs in a regressive manner so to not prevent future beautification of the HTML back to readable form.

Answer 2

A bit late but still... By using output_buffering it is as simple as that:

function compress($string)
{
    // Remove html comments
    $string = preg_replace('/<!--.*-->/', '', $string);

    // Merge multiple spaces into one space
    $string = preg_replace('/\s+/', ' ', $string);   

    // Remove space between tags. Skip the following if
    // you want as it will also remove the space 
    // between <span>Hello</span> <span>World</span>.
    return preg_replace('/>\s+</', '><', $string);      
}

ob_start('compress');

// Here goes your html.    

ob_end_flush();

Answer 3

Is there any tools that can do it?

Yes, here's a tool you could include into a build process or work into a web cache layer: http://code.google.com/p/htmlcompressor/

Or, if you're looking for a tool to minify HTML that you paste in, try: http://www.willpeavy.com/minifier/

Answer 4

You could parse the HTML code into a DOM tree (which should keep content whitespace in the nodes), then serialise it back into HTML, without any prettifying spaces.