Remove whitespace from your pages

Ok, this is not new. The thing is that removing whitespace is a very tricky discipline that is different from site to site. At least that was what I thought until very recently.

For some unexplained reason I started working on a little simple method to remove whitespace in a way so it works on all websites without breaking any HTML. Maybe not unexplained since I’ve written about it so many times that it would seem I got a secret obsession.

Obsession or not, here is the code I ended up with after a few hours of hacking. Just copy the code onto your base page or master page and watch the magic.

private static readonly Regex REGEX_BETWEEN_TAGS = new Regex(@">\s+<", RegexOptions.Compiled);

private static readonly Regex REGEX_LINE_BREAKS = new Regex(@"\n\s+", RegexOptions.Compiled);



/// <summary>
/// Initializes the <see cref="T:System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter"></see> object and calls on the child
/// controls of the <see cref="T:System.Web.UI.Page"></see> to render.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="writer">The <see cref="T:System.Web.UI.HtmlTextWriter"></see> that receives the page content.</param>
protected override void Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)

{

  using (HtmlTextWriter htmlwriter = new HtmlTextWriter(new System.IO.StringWriter()))

  {

    base.Render(htmlwriter);

    string html = htmlwriter.InnerWriter.ToString();



    html = REGEX_BETWEEN_TAGS.Replace(html, "> <");

    html = REGEX_LINE_BREAKS.Replace(html, string.Empty);



    writer.Write(html.Trim());

  }

}

Remember that whitespace removal speeds up rendering in especially IE and reduces the overall weight of your page.