I've had a little utility that I've been kicking around for some time now that I've found to be quite useful in my JavaScript application-building endeavors. It's a super-simple templating function that is fast, caches quickly, and is easy to use. I have a couple tricks that I use to make it real fun to mess with.
Here's the source code to the templating function (a more-refined version of this code will be in my upcoming book Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja):
// John Resig - http://ejohn.org/ - MIT Licensed
( function ( ) {
var cache = { };
this. tmpl = function tmpl (str, data ) {
// Figure out if we're getting a template, or if we need to
// load the template - and be sure to cache the result.
var fn = ! /\W/. test (str ) ?
cache [str ] = cache [str ] ||
tmpl (document. getElementById (str ). innerHTML ) :
// Generate a reusable function that will serve as a template
// generator (and which will be cached).
new Function ( "obj",
"var p=[],print=function(){p.push.apply(p,arguments);};" +
// Introduce the data as local variables using with(){}
"with(obj){p.push('" +
// Convert the template into pure JavaScript
str
. replace ( /[\r\t\n]/g, " " )
. split ( "<%" ). join ( "\t" )
. replace (/ ( (^|%> ) [^\t ]* ) '/g, "$1\r")
.replace(/\t=(.*?)%>/g, "',$ 1, '")
.split("\t").join("' ); ")
.split("%> ").join("p. push ( '")
.split("\r").join("\\' ")
+ " ');}return p.join(' ');");
// Provide some basic currying to the user
return data ? fn( data ) : fn;
};
})();
You would use it against templates written like this (it doesn't have to be in this particular manner - but it's a style that I enjoy):
<div id="<%=id%>" class="<%=(i % 2 == 1 ? " even" : "")%>">
<div class="grid_1 alpha right">
<img class="righted" src="<%=profile_image_url%>"/>
</div>
<div class="grid_6 omega contents">
<p> <b> <a href="/<%=from_user%>"><%=from_user%></a>:</b> <%=text%></p>
</div>
</div>
</script>
You can also inline script:
Quick tip: Embedding scripts in your page that have a unknown content-type (such is the case here - the browser doesn't know how to execute a text/html script) are simply ignored by the browser - and by search engines and screenreaders. It's a perfect cloaking device for sneaking templates into your page. I like to use this technique for quick-and-dirty cases where I just need a little template or two on the page and want something light and fast.
and you would use it from script like so:
results. innerHTML = tmpl ( "item_tmpl", dataObject );
You could pre-compile the results for later use. If you call the templating function with only an ID (or a template code) then it'll return a pre-compiled function that you can execute later:
for ( var i = 0; i < users. length; i++ ) {
html += show_user ( users [i ] );
}
The biggest falling-down of the method, at this point, is the parsing/conversion code - it could probably use a little love. It does use one technique that I enjoy, though: If you're searching and replacing through a string with a static search and a static replace it's faster to perform the action with .split("match").join("replace")
- which seems counter-intuitive but it manages to work that way in most modern browsers. (There are changes going in place to grossly improve the performance of .replace(/match/g, "replace")
in the next version of Firefox - so the previous statement won't be the case for long.)
Feel free to have fun with it - I'd be very curious to see what mutations occur with the script. Since it's so simple it seems like there's a lot that can still be done with it.