Automatic merging and versioning of CSS/JS files with PHP

This is total WIN.  If you find yourself having to work in PHP, and you write heavy, application framework-enhanced Javascript, as I do frequently, Ed Eliot’s script for merging, versioning and cacheing JS and CSS is totally awesome.

Combine Ed’s script with Martin Kliehm’s modified version of Ed’s combineJS.php script and you  have geek *bliss* (well…. you *are* still working with PHP, but whatever, you know what I mean.  Oh how I miss you Python/Django.).

Ed has written an updated version of his script that integrates JS min for smallest-possible JS files, however it requires that you compile a C script on your server.  Martin’s modified version will run on pure PHP, which is great when you’re dealing with a host that limits a competent developer’s ability to do such things.

One of my clients’ site is hosted on Yahoo Small Business, which totally sucks and is extremely limiting on a modern developer, but this combo worked like a charm, even on Yahoo hosting.  (Yahoo, listen up and get with the program.  It’s 2009, going on 2010, and we simply need more.  At least get us some SSH access man, I mean come on.)