Question: Does anyone know of a good way to automatically run certain file types through a processing script on upload? I'm trying to accomplish automatically minifying CSS and Javascript when I upload them to the server, keeping a nice, human-readable version on the local side while keeping a minified one on the server. I'm currently using WinSCP on Windows, which is scriptable to some degree but might not be scriptable enough. I'd probably need some kind of cobbled-together solution, so don't be afraid to suggest something with duct tape in it; however, I do need to do the minification on my local computer and upload the squished file, since I use shared hosting and can't install junk on the server.

Thanks.

Answer: 
Well, to minify CSS is just a couple of regexes. 

```
// (PHP) but should be easily portable to any language
function compressCSS($css) {
    return
        preg_replace(
            array('@\s\s+@','@(\w+:)\s*([\w\s,#]+;?)@'),
            array(' ','$1$2'),
            str_replace(
                array("\r","\n","\t",' {','} ',';}'),
                array('','','','{','}','}'),
                preg_replace('@/\*[^*]*\*+([^/][^*]*\*+)*/@', '', $css)
            )
        )
    ;
}

```

And Dean Edwards's Javascript packer has been ported to [PHP, Perl, .NET and WSH](http://dean.edwards.name/download/#packer), so if you're using any of those technologies, you could actually have it running on your own server. ...Just remember to cache the results!
I just wrote this minfier script in python. Like Bills solution, it uses the YUI compressor, but will work in a make-less environment. It assumes that the raw (unminifie) files will be in /some/path/src/, and that the minified versions should go in /some/path/. It also assumes that the yuicompressor jar file is in the current folder:

```
import os, glob
from subprocess import Popen,PIPE

def RunCommand( cmd, show_output  ):
    p = Popen(cmd, shell=True,stdout=PIPE,stderr=PIPE)
    for line in p.stdout:
        if show_output:
            print line

    outerr = "\n".join(p.stderr.readlines() )   

    if len(outerr) > 0:
        print "ERROR: " + outerr
        sys.exit()

    code = p.wait()         
    if ( code > 0 ):
        print ("ERROR CODE: %i" % code )
        sys.exit()

compresser = "yuicompressor-2.4.2.jar"
dirs = [ "../wwwroot/css/", "../wwwroot/JavaScript/"]

extensions = ["*.js", "*.css" ]

for dir in dirs:
    src = dir + "/src/"
    for ext in extensions:      
        for path in glob.glob( os.path.join( src, ext)):
            file = os.path.basename(path)
            src_file = os.path.normpath( src + "/" +  file )
            dest_file = os.path.normpath( dir + "/" + file )
            if not os.path.isfile(dest_file) or os.path.getmtime(src_file) > os.path.getmtime(dest_file):
                print "minifying %s..." % (dest_file) 
                command = "java -jar %s %s -o %s" % ( compresser, src_file, dest_file )
                RunCommand(command, True)

```