We have several fairly large JavaScript files embedded into a single script resources DLL. This is then consumed by multiple projects by way of a reference and page includes via the ASP.NET script manager. This keeps things nice and neat within our ASP.NET pages and requires very little work to integrate into new projects.
The problem is that some of these script files are quite larger (approx 100KB) and take time to download. By running minify on them before embedding this is reduced down a lot (around 70KB) but not enough. What we would like to do is GZIP the files before they are embedded. However, just gzipping the files causes syntax errors as the content is not unzipped. There is a content type “text/javascript” applied in AssemblyInfo when the resource is embedded but we can’t find a way to specify content-encoding.
Is there any way to make this work without having to write a httpmodule/handler (which would mean changing the config for all consuming projects)?
Okay, so it looks, from many different attempts, an absence of answers and a lot of Google searching, that the HttpModule is the only way to approach this. In an attempt to keep this easy to configure I’ve setup an HttpModule inside the same dll containing the script files as below.
Simplified DLL Structure
The only additional work is an entry in the consumer’s web config to enable the module. Plus I’ve made the initialize call, in MyScriptManager, that includes the script tags, detect the presence/mode of the new http module and serve gziped, debug or minimized versions as required. This means we don’t have to recode or configure any old projects for them to work so achieves much the same result.