I used NodeJs with Handlebars and thought about switching to PugJs because some functionality is native - using Handlebars requires some helper functions / partials.
In Handlebars I have to define a layout and pass in the template. In PugJs I created two example routes
First route file:
const express = require('express');
const router = express.Router();
router.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.render('index', {
title: 'Home',
template: 'main'
});
});
module.exports = router;
Second route file:
const express = require('express');
const router = express.Router();
router.get('/', (req, res) => {
res.render('index', {
title: 'Page2',
template: 'pageTwo'
});
});
module.exports = router;
As you can see I always have to render my index file and pass in the desired pug file as a template variable.
index.pug
doctype html
html
include ./header.pug
body
include ./templates/#{template}.pug
header.pug
head
title #{title} template!
main.pug
script(src='./client/main.js')
h1 main content here
pageTwo.pug
p pageTwo
When rendering the pug files I get this error
ENOENT: no such file or directory, open
'...\views\templates\#{template}.pug'
How can I replace #{template} with the correct template variable?
Dynamic template selection isn't a feature of pug, I believe it has something to do with how pug pre-compiles everything into a JavaScript function that stays in-memory inside node.js when it runs. The benefit of that is super-fast page rendering, so we're happy to keep using pug and just work around this.
Speaking of which, you can accomplish what you want to do using conditional logic:
doctype html
html
include ./header.pug
body
if template === 'pageOne'
include ./templates/pageOne.pug
else if template === 'pageTwo'
include ./templates/pageTwo.pug
else
include ./templates/home.pug
You should also look into the extends feature to simplify adding the header into your templates and mixins to resuse code between templates. You might find that these features could provide a better solution to your requirements with some redesign.
Related
I'm using Handlebars in my NodeJS application as my templating engine.
I've put all my templates in a views folder like so :
-
- /controllers
- /views
- index.html
- server.js
Here's my code to render the template when the user access a given URL (using express for routing) :
app.get("/", function(req, res){
var template = handlebars.compile("views/index.html");
var data = {"name": "Charles"};
var result = template(data);
res.send(result);
});
I'm trying to render a template from a file, but it's not working. This is what the browser outputs directly when I'm accessing the / URL :
views/index.html
That makes sense, since it's interpreting the given param as a string directly and not as a path to an external template.
How can I load my template file (in this case the one in views/index.html to a variable, so that I can then render the template?
The only examples I found were storing all the templates in a file and loading them via AJAX, but all these examples were from "front-end" handlebars and not when using it with Node.
Is it possible to achieve what I want? I looked at the documentation but it's hard to find good infos for handlebars with NodeJS.
From your description, it sounds like you want handlebars as view engine, with dynamic views. You don't need to do this manually, here is an example (using express-handlebars):
var handlebars = require('express-handlebars');
app.engine('.html', handlebars({layout: false, extname: '.html'}));
app.set('view engine', '.html');
app.get("/:view", function(req, res){
var view = req.params.view;
res.render(view, { "name": "Charles" }); // Whatever data you want
});
With handlebars you have to load the file yourself or you can precompile the files (using grunt/gulp maybe) I feel way more confortable with swig ( http://paularmstrong.github.io/swig/ )
It is very simple to use. And it has also integration with express if you want.
var swig = require('swig');
swig.renderFile('/path/to/template.html', {
pagename: 'awesome people',
authors: ['Paul', 'Jim', 'Jane']
});
In your case
app.get("/", function(req, res){
res.send(swig.renderFile('views/index.html', {"name": "Charles"}));
});
Usually you render a Jade page in a route like this:
app.get('/page', function(req, res, next){
res.render('page.jade');
});
But I want to serve all Jade pages (automatically rendered), just like how one would serve static HTML
app.use(express.static('public'))
Is there a way to do something similar for Jade?
"static" means sending existing files unchanged directly from disk to the browser. Jade can be served this way but that is pretty unusual. Usually you want to render jade to HTML on the server which by definition is not "static", it's dynamic. You do it like this:
app.get('/home', function (req, res) {
res.render('home'); // will render home.jade and send the HTML
});
If you want to serve the jade itself for rendering in the browser, just reference it directly in the url when loading it into the browser like:
$.get('/index.jade', function (jade) {
//...
});
https://github.com/runk/connect-jade-static
Usage
Assume the following structure of your project:
/views
/partials
/file.jade
Let's make jade files from /views/partials web accessable:
var jadeStatic = require('connect-jade-static');
app = express();
app.configure(function() {
app.use(jadeStatic({
baseDir: path.join(__dirname, '/views/partials'),
baseUrl: '/partials',
jade: { pretty: true }
}));
});
Now, if you start your web server and request /views/partials/file.html in browser you
should be able see the compiled jade template.
Connect-jade-static is good, but not the perfect solution for me.
To begin with, here are the reasons why I needed jade:
My app is a single page app, there are no HTMLs generated from templates at runtime. Yet, I am using jade to generate HTML files because:
Mixins: lots of repeated / similar code in my HTML is shortened by the use of mixins
Dropdowns: I know, lots of people use ng-repeat to fill the options in a select box. This is a waste of CPU when the list is static, e.g., list of countries. The right thing to do is have the select options filled in within the HTML or partial. But then, a long list of options makes the HTML / jade hard to read. Also, very likely, the list of countries is already available elsewhere, and it doesn’t make sense to duplicate this list.
So, I decided to generate most of my HTML partials using jade at build time. But, this became a pain during development, because of the need to re-build HTMLs when the jade file changes. Yes, I could have used connect-jade-static, but I really don’t want to generate the HTMLs at run time — they are indeed static files.
So, this is what I did:
Added a 'use' before the usual use of express.static
Within this, I check for the timestamps of jade and the corresponding html file
If the jade file is newer, regenerate the html file
Call next() after the regeneration, or immediately, if regeneration is not required.
next() will fall-through to express.static, where the generated HTML will be served
Wrap the ‘use’ around a “if !production” condition, and in the build scripts, generate all the HTML files required.
This way, I can also use all the goodies express.static (like custom headers) provides and still use jade to generate these.
Some code snippets:
var express = require('express');
var fs = require('fs')
var jade = require('jade');
var urlutil = require('url');
var pathutil = require('path');
var countries = require('./countries.js');
var staticDir = 'static'; // really static files like .css and .js
var staticGenDir = 'static.gen'; // generated static files, like .html
var staticSrcDir = 'static.src'; // source for generated static files, .jade
if (process.argv[2] != 'prod') {
app.use(‘/static', function(req, res, next) {
var u = urlutil.parse(req.url);
if (pathutil.extname(u.pathname) == '.html') {
var basename = u.pathname.split('.')[0];
var htmlFile = staticGenDir + basename + '.html';
var jadeFile = staticSrcDir + basename + '.jade';
var hstat = fs.existsSync(htmlFile) ? fs.statSync(htmlFile) : null;
var jstat = fs.existsSync(jadeFile) ? fs.statSync(jadeFile) : null;
if ( jstat && (!hstat || (jstat.mtime.getTime() > hstat.mtime.getTime())) ) {
var out = jade.renderFile(jadeFile, {pretty: true, countries: countries});
fs.writeFile(htmlFile, out, function() {
next();
});
} else {
next();
}
} else {
next();
}
});
}
app.use('/static', express.static(staticDir)); // serve files from really static if exists
app.use('/static', express.static(staticGenDir)); // if not, look in generated static dir
In reality, I have a js file containing not just countries, but various other lists shared between node, javascript and jade.
Hope this helps someone looking for an alternative.
I have a "partial" template that I want to use both client-side and server-side.
Is there some method or filter or something that's very similar to include except that instead of executing the template immediately, it returns a client-compiled function which I could then assign to a JS variable and use throughout my script?
At present, I'm doing this:
exports.list = function(req, res){
res.render('file/list', {
...
fileItemTemplate: jade.compile(fs.readFileSync(path.join(req.app.get('views'),'file','file-item.jade')), {client: true})
});
};
And then in my template I have:
ul#folder-list.thumbnails
each file in files
include file-item
...
script(type='text/javascript')
var fileItemTemplate = !{fileItemTemplate};
And in this way I can render some items to HTML on page-load, and then add some more in later by rendering the partial as data comes in.
This works, but it doesn't feel very DRY because I have to read in the file, and deal with filepaths and stuff in the route, and then essentially redeclare the exact same variable client-side.
Is there a nice way of doing this?
Something like this would be ideal:
script(type='text/javascript')
var fileItemTemplate = !{compile file-item};
A possible solution could be JadeAsset. See also the discussion here.
You can hook assets into Express:
assets.on('complete', function() {
var app = express.createServer();
app.configure(function() {
app.use(assets); // that's all you need to do
});
app.listen(8000);
});
To create your Jade assets:
var assets = new AssetRack([
new rack.JadeAsset({
url: '/templates.js',
dirname: __dirname + '/templates'
})
]);
I would like to use Jade block inheritance but I'm not sure how to do that if I'm not using Express. According to the Jade doc, I can use block inheritance in Express by simply adding app.set('view options', { layout: false });. How can I achieve this without Express?
https://github.com/visionmedia/jade
You don't need Express at all to use Jade's Template inheritance; you only need Jade:
// app.js
var jade = require('jade');
var options = { pretty: true, locals: {} };
jade.renderFile(__dirname + '/home.jade', options, function (err, html) {
console.log(html);
});
// home.jade
extends core
block body
h1 Home
// core.jade
doctype html
html
head
meta(charset='utf-8')
title Foo
body
block body
Another example can be found in the repository:
examples/extend.js
examples/extend.jade
examples/extend-layout.jade.
The reason the Jade docs mention setting the 'view options' for Express 2.x is because Express' own (and now defunct in 3.x) layouts are a competing feature that should be disabled to prevent conflicts when using Jade's inheritance.
I'm playing around with Expressjs and am attempting to extract the page title from the default template to middleware instead of passed into the view's model each time.
Default index.jade template
h1= title
p Welcome to the #{title}
Default route from template
exports.index = function(req, res){
res.render('index', { title: "Express" });
};
I attempted the following but get an error from Express saying title is undefined when I do this.
module.exports = function(req, res, next){
res.title = 'Express';
next();
}
This is obviously a trivial example but it's also something that I am trying to figure out since there will probably come a time where I want to inject things into the response's model after each route. I just cannot figure out how to do such.
Thanks
You have to use default helpers. Read the documentation. Here's a simple snippet:
app.helpers({
title: 'Express'
});
/* Now JADE sees your variable title
without explicitly defining it
in every view. */
Also look at dynamic helpers in the documentation. These can be linked to req and res variables (normal helpers do not depend on request/response).