This maybe looks obvious but I can't figure out how to convert this working code from EJS to Handlebars.
<%= configHelper.exportClient(__config, __config.path.base + 'api/db/schemas/')%>
To render simple values it's easy {{__config.path.base}} but when I try to do some calculation or ternaire if condition it breaks.
It is not possible using Handlebars, because while EJS allow to perform calculation, set variables and so on in a template file, Handlebars doesn't.
The only way to do it would be to write a handlebars helper, or to load the template with the pre-calculated variables and use them as it.
Related
I need to access the variable user in my client-side that sent by
res.render('home.html', { user: req.user });
without using template engines like pug or ejs
Is that possible?
HTML is not a templating language, so it can't be used to send variables.
res.render() function compiles your template , inserts locals there, and creates html output out of those two things. The syntax is as follows -
res.render(view [, locals] [, callback])
The view argument is a string that is the file path of the view file to render. For this to work, you need a template or view engine .
In html, you can't dynamically pass/insert data variables. That's the main use case for templating engine. They put runtime/dynamic value in html which is what you are probably looking for.
In short, its better to use any template engine like pug,jade,ejs, etc most of which would have almost similar syntax with html to render dynamic html pages. I don't think there's any method (atleast simple enough) to send variables dynamically from server to client in an html page. Using a template engine would be the best choice in your use case.
For eg. you are passing user from server side and most probably want the passed variable to be rendered on the client side. You can just install an view engine like ejs - npm install ejs, set your view engine in app.js - app.use('view engine','ejs'); , and just add this line in the html page where you want to send the variable to client side like - <p> <%= user %> </p> and that's it. Keep your html file in view folder and this would do it.
Summary:
I'm currently migrating a website on Apache + PHP stack over to Node + Express, and would like to know what is the best way/best practice (if there is one) for dynamically injecting meta tags under the new stack.
Details:
Under the existing stack, meta tags are injected dynamically by adding PHP codes into the HTML file directly. As rendering is done on server side, the tags are properly interpreted by Facebook/Google+/whatever web crawlers.
Under the new stack, after doing some research, I've come across two options:
Use template engine like Pug (Jade) to render the HTML with locals. (It seems to be an overkill to rewrite the existing HTML with Pug's syntax though? Can Pug deal with HTML, or I've to consider other template engine like EJS? What template engine do you advise me to explore?)
Use DOM manipulation plugin like Cheerio to inject the meta tags first, before rendering begins.
Between these two options, which one will have a better performance or there is no material difference? Are there any other ways that you'd otherwise recommend? Thanks!
EJS would probably be the simplest one for that and very similar to PHP.
You can also take a look at Mustache and Handlebars for other options with minimal changes to your existing HTML.
with EJS: <html><head><%= yourMetaTags %> ...
with Mustache: <html><head>{{ yourMetaTags }} ...
with Handlebars: <html><head>{{ yourMetaTags }} ...
Also doT.js is very fast.
See:
http://www.embeddedjs.com/
https://mustache.github.io/
http://handlebarsjs.com/
http://olado.github.io/doT/
Parsing the HTML and manipulating it with a DOM API just to insert meta tags would be an overkill in my opinion.
On the other hand if all you need is to insert meta tags then you could make a simple regex substitution, using something like yourHTML.replace('<head>', '<head>'+yourMetaTags); but it could potentially get more complex over time when you need more functionality. After all, everyone has made a templating engine at some point in life.
Switching from handlebars to pug I don't know how to populate a dropdown in pug. In handlebars I could do
<script type='text/javascript'>
$('.ui.dropdown').dropdown('set selected', [{{#each trip.tags}}'{{this}}',{{/each}}]);
</script>
Anyone got a clue what's the best practice in pug?
It looks like you're trying to generate JavaScript values as part of your template rendering. The approach you have taken in markdown could cause an XSS attack if this is not properly escaped (or it might just cause values like " to appear as ").
In pug, we recommend using js-stringify when you need to embed template values in a script. To do this, you need to install js-stringify using npm. You then need to include it in your locals. e.g.
pug.renderFile('my-template.pug', {stringify: require('js-stringify')});
Then you can use it as:
script(type='text/javascript').
$('.ui.dropdown').dropdown('set selected', !{stringify(trip.tags)});
N.B. It is only safe to use the !{...} syntax because js-stringify properly escapes the values before rendering.
I'm looking to use Express to render raw strings as HTML, with the ability to reference static files in a specified directory (CSS, images, and other resources).
I've done a lot of research, but I haven't seen anything that approaches what I'm trying to do. For example, I thought perhaps writing a custom templating engine that only pretended to load a file would cut it, but that doesn't seem to do the trick.
What's the best way to approach this?
There are many ways to do it.
It can done in any other templating engine as well but here i am guiding you to implement same using EJS(Embedded Javascript).
Use Express Generator to create an ExpressJS app with EJS templating Engine.
command :
express --ejs AppName
For more information about express Generator refer to doc here
Now EJS has tags such as :
1. <% code %> - Code that is evaulated without "echo" it is not printed out.
2. <%= code %> - Code that is evaluated and printed out and escaped!
3. <%- Code %> - Code that is evaluated printed out and not escaped!
So in your case you can use 3rd the third tag that i have mentioned above.
Render EJS views in the usual way from your route config:
res.render('index.ejs', {
// data you want to pass ..
});
Code sample
Some time ago i was playing around with EJS, i developed a very small blogApp for practice.
You can look into this view, line number 33, for more practical way of implementing same.
Or can you render partially and render rest later. So lets say when app starts up it renders most of the html. But when user abc wants to see his profile jade renders name to abc and merge it with regular pre rendered html and then you send it etc.
Rendering whole html pages at every request seems like a waste.
Converting all static html to jade seems like a annoyance that can be avoided. Slowly css became LESS and html became JADE?
I am lost on how to use jade I am learning express.
You can use Jade's compileClient function to create a function that will render predefined Jade code on the fly. (See the API reference.)
So, if you create a Jade file with the dynamic HTML, and compile that for the client, you can then call that function at a later time, and insert the resulting HTML string to the DOM.