assetmingle 0.1.1

assetmingle
===========

Easily mingle your images with your HTML/CSS!

This tool replaces image assets included in HTML and CSS files with [Data URLs][1], reducing the number of requests needed to load a page. It's useful for small images used on a page; GIFs, PNGs, small sprites, etc.

Assetmingle is designed to be part of your deployment tools keychain. It looks for assets with the '#mingle' anchor as part of their URL, which means you can happily continue to work in a development environment and just "compile" the resulting CSS when you're ready to deploy. Hooray!

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme "Wikipedia Data URI Entry"

Installation
============

python ./setup.py install

Usage
=====

Just add #mingle to the end of the URLs to the image assets in your CSS or HTML like so:

body
{
background: url('/images/small_background.png#mingle');
}

And then run:

assetmingle main.css

Assuming the 'images' directory is in the same place as main.css is, then your CSS will be changed to:

body
{
background: url('data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAA...');
}

That's it!

Example Deployment Use
======================

I usually use assetmingle in a deployment step. I love [Fabric][2], so the following is an example of a task that I use frequently in projects where I also have some sort of deploy step:

@task
def mingle_css():
local('assetmingle -o --root=app/static app/static/css/main.css > app/static/css/main.final.css')

The -o option outputs the new CSS to standard out and --root defines where the images directory lives

[2]: http://www.fabfile.org "Fabric, a simple tool for remote execution and deployment"

Documentation
=============

Usage: assetmingle [-hvo] [--root=<path>] [INPUT ...]

Options:
-root=<path> The directory where your images or assets can be referenced from.
-o Output everything to standard out
-h --help Show this screen.
-v Be verbose.
Copyright 2013 Mike Douglas

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.