Jist

Rendering engine for rendering js files.

Why

Your JSON API route handlers / controllers can get cluttered with view logic(the logic that creates / builds the response JSON object). It can be nice to separate out response generation / build logic once the handler has fetched the data. Jist can help you transform this:

var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();
var myService = require('./my-service');
var _ = require('lodash');

router.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
  myService.getPeople().then(function(people) {
    return people.map(function(person) {
	  person.pick(['a', 'b', 'c']);
	  person.d = (person.a + person.b) / person.c;
    });
  }).then(res.json.bind(res));
});

into

var express = require('express');
var router = express.Router();
var myService = require('./my-service');
var jist = require('jist');

router.get('/', function(req, res, next) {
  myService.getPeople().then(function(people){
    json.render('index', {
      people: people
    });
});

and

// views/index.jist
var _ = require('lodash');

return people.map(function(person) {
  person.pick(['a', 'b', 'c']);
  person.d = (person.a + person.b) / person.c;
});

This encourages reusability of view logic as well. Partials are coming soon.

Installation

npm install --save @rohhittt/jist

Usage

Express

In your app.js

var express = require('express');
const app = express();

var jist = require('jist');
jist.register(app);
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));

And you are done!

Just start creating .jist files in your views directory and call res.render(filePath, scope), where

filepath Is the filepath of your jist template you want to render with

scope Is the scope you want in your template. For eg. if you call

res.json('index', {
  a: 1,
  b: 2,
  c: true,
  _: require('lodash')
}`

Inside of your template, a, b, c, _ will be present as local variables.