How to uglify / minify PHP output?

Question

I know the output generated by PHP will follow the way my code is written. For instance :

echo '<div id="test">';
echo '<div id="other-test>';
echo '</div>';
echo '</div>';

Will output something like

<div id="test">
<div id="other-test">
</div>
</div>

Is there a way to generate something like this instead, without change my code ?

<div id="test"><div id="other-test"></div></div>;

Would be something like grunt do with .js files.

I know i could change my source code to get this output, but this would make the code harder to read during developing.

Why i want to do this ? Because if i open the source of html output of my app, i see a lot of line breaks and blank spaces and i think if i could get ride of it, less network traffic would be required.

Thanks !

Answer 1

I'd use output buffering. You've got something like this

<?php
echo '<div id="test">';
echo '<div id="other-test>';
//a lot of other complicated output logic

echo '</div>';
echo '</div>';

First, at the start of your code add a call to start output buffering. This will prevent PHP from sending output.

<?php
ob_start();    
echo '<div id="test">';
echo '<div id="other-test>';
//a lot of other complicated output logic    
echo '</div>';
echo '</div>';    

Then, at the end of the long complicated output code, use ob_get_clean()

<?php    
ob_start();    
echo '<div id="test">';
echo '<div id="other-test>';
//a lot of other complicated output logic    
echo '</div>';
echo '</div>';    

$output = ob_get_clean();

The call to ob_get_clean will discard the output buffer (PHP won't echo anything) but return the contents of the output buffer before doing so (ie $output will have a string of what would have been output).

You're then free to modify the the string all you like before echo ing it yourself

<?php    
ob_start();    
echo '<div id="test">';
echo '<div id="other-test>';
//a lot of other complicated output logic    
echo '</div>';
echo '</div>';    

$output = ob_get_clean();

//remove newlines and carriage returns
$output = str_replace("\r", '', $output);            
$output = str_replace("\n", '', $output);                
$output = someOtherMinifyFunction($output);
echo $output;