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Make Combres work with ASP.NET


After having problems with SquishIt when bundling JavaScript, I decided to give Combres a try instead.

However, while SquishIt works right out of the box, Combres must be configured a little. This page describes how you configure it for your project.

In short, you need to:

  • Create a custom Combres configuration file
  • Add the following to web.config:
    1. A Combres configSection tag
    1. A Combres section tag (which you point to the Combres config file)
    1. Two httpModule tags
  • Add RouteTable.Routes.AddCombresRoute(“Combres Route”); to Application_Start in Global.asax
  • Add <%= WebExtensions.CombresLink(“…”) %> wherever you want to add JS or CSS tags

With SquishIt, you only need to add a bundle tag to your page, which is easier. However, Combres is said to perform better and handles JavaScript closures with no problems at all.

With Combres up and running, I noticed that it did not work with IIS7 Integrated Pipeline mode. If you run into this, remove all content in the Combres section tag, so that it looks like this:

<section name=”combres” type=”Combres.ConfigSectionSetting” />

Then, instead of:

<httpModules>
	<add name="ScriptModule" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule,
	System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
	PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
	<add name="UrlRoutingModule" type="System.Web.Routing.UrlRoutingModule,
	System.Web.Routing, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
	PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
</httpModules>

you also have to add the modules to the system.webServer/modules tag, since it is the one used by IIS7 (keep the ones above as well, though):

<modules>
	<add name="ScriptModule" type="System.Web.Handlers.ScriptModule,
		System.Web.Extensions, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
		PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
	<add name="UrlRoutingModule" type="System.Web.Routing.UrlRoutingModule,
		System.Web.Routing, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral,
		PublicKeyToken=31BF3856AD364E35"/>
</modules>

If you follow these steps, Combres should work.