Is it a good practice to have one bundle per view in Asp Net MVC

Question

Since bundling and minification is all about optimization and making pages load faster, it appears to me that it would be logical to create one bundle for scripts and one bundle for styles per view basis, so that to load all scripts and styles a browser will need to make 2 requests at most. So let's say I have a _Layout.cshtml where I need 3 js files bootstrap.js,jquery.js and some custom1.js I can create one bundle, something like this:

bundles.Add(new ScriptBundle("~/bundles/layout").Include(
          "~/Scripts/bootstrap.js",
          "~/Scripts/jquery.js",
          "~/Scripts/custom1.js"));

Then let's say I have another view User.cshtml where I need bootstrap.js,jquery.js and custom2.js, again I create one bundle:

bundles.Add(new ScriptBundle("~/bundles/user").Include(
          "~/Scripts/bootstrap.js",
          "~/Scripts/jquery.js",
          "~/Scripts/custom2.js"));

Same approach can be used for style bundles. But from what I see it's not a common practice to do it this way usually bundles are created on the type basis, e.g., one for bootstrap, one for jquery, one for custom js/css files etc. But wouldn't doing so increase the loading time of the page, because having more bundles means more request to the server. Also what is the problem of doing things the way I described at the beginning?

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 22 '20 at 12:51

I think it might almost even be counterproductive to use a single bundle per page.

There's an overhead for creation of the bundle... albeit, that overhead is incurred once per application instance (it's cached by the application after the first call), but if you have a new bundle for each page, that means for each distinct page you visit, a new bundle has to be created before it can be served. That would defeat the purpose of the bundles considerably, I think.

Rather, I usually have two bundles: one core bundle which every page is expected to require and will hardly ever change once the initial project is set up. This includes core styles, jQuery/knockout, other base-vendor libraries.

The second bundle is usually per-application context (e.g., the Users bundle might have modular stuff related to users in general, but not necessarily to a specific page).

Anything page-specific doesn't usually even go into a bundle.

The practical performance effect of bundling (at least for business applications that I tend to write) isn't really all that great, considering that once the client has called it the first time, it's there until it changes again anyway.

If you have a public site where you expect a greater number of first-time visitors, you might take a slightly different approach.

You meant "defeat the purpose," I presume. – Craig Tullis Jul 02 '17 at 16:41 — Craig Tullis, Jul 02 '17 at 16:41
@Craig - I did, but default almost works too... – jleach Jul 02 '17 at 17:20 — jleach, Jul 02 '17 at 17:20

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 02 '17 at 09:39

No.

Due to browser caching, you get the best overall results by using the same bundle or bundles on all the pages. This means that the user will download all the css and js when they hit the first page and reuse that file on subsequent pages.

Given that the bulk of the bundle will be packaged javascript frameworks such as jquery and bootstrap. Your extra few bytes of customised code has an insignificant effect on the overall page load speed.

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 02 '17 at 14:03

The downside of a bundle per page is that the cached bundle from one page cannot be used on another page, what you normally want is the bulk of your scripts (e.g. jQuery bootstrap etc...) being downloaded once and cached for all pages on the site.

The "optimal" solution from a caching perspective would be to have a single bundle containing all .js for all pages across the entire site, the downside of that approach being that the bundle ends up being quite large which means your initial page load is slower, which might not be desirable for customer facing websites where initial impressions are everything.

The "best" solution is likely going to be a mix of techniques, e.g.

A "core" bundle (stuff like jQuery and Bootstrap which is used on nearly every page,) plus a per-page bundle
A single bundle for the entire site, maybe excluding a javascript heavy page which adds a lot to the bundle size

We also usually wind up with one or two "lite" bundles for small pages that don't need the full boat (login pages, etc) — jleach, Jul 02 '17 at 17:23

Is it a good practice to have one bundle per view in Asp Net MVC

3 Answers3