CODEWITHSUNDEEP
asp.net-mvcrequirejswebpack
dagda1
dagda1

Reputation: 28770

Bundling and minifying in a non SPA ASP.NET MVC application

I am about to start work on a non SPA ASP.NET MVC application and I was wondering what the best practices are for bundling and minifying.

I've been using webpack for react but this does not seem to fit in with a non SPA website or would this be a good fit?

I've used requirejs in the past where I used the data-main attribute to specify a file for the current view but I'm not sure how this would work with minified code where we would potentially only have 1 file.

I know .NET has its own ScriptBundler but is this still supported and should I perhaps use gulp instead?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 183

Answers (1)

hbulens
hbulens

Reputation: 1969

If you're using ASP.NET MVC 5 or lower, then you can use both gulp and the script/style bundlers.

For instance, you could use gulp to do the minifying and use the script/style bundling to do the rest. This way you can use the non-minified scripts and styles during development (debug mode) whereas you only use the minified and bundled scripts in release mode.

Depending on your requirements, you can make multiple bundles and add those to your views. Performance wise, I'd suggest you use 2 bundles per page: 1 script bundle (near the closing body tag) and 1 style bundle (in the head section). Don't forget about common scripts and styles: those can be located the _Layout partial view. So you end up with 2 bundles per type per page.

I use this approach for my own projects. However, for ASP.NET Core applications, you should consider only using gulp. As far as I know, there isn't a real replacement for the bundling as we know it in ASP.NET MVC 5 applications, it just works a bit differently. But if you use gulp already, then you won't have big problems migrating to asp.net core (which you will at some point I guess).

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions