Backbone Template-Manager

Simple template manager for your Backbone application. This library allows you to:

• Use a template manager to query templates from the DOM or from a server.
• Create view with a template manager to download templates.
• Render view with your model and a default compile function (use _.template by default).

Installation

• With npm: npm install backbone-template-manager --save.
• With bower: bower install backbone-template-manager --save.

Once installed, import the library using ES6 import, or import the ES5 script (transpiled with babel):

<script type="text/javascript" src="/vendors/backbone-template-manager/es5/backbone-template-manager.js"></script>

View

Here is an example:

import Backbone from 'backbone';
import {TemplateView} from 'backbone-template-manager';

export class MyView extends TemplateView {
  initialize() {
    this.model = new Backbone.Model({
      id: 1,
      name: 'John Doe'
    });
  }

  templates() {
    return 'my-template';
  }
}

What happens here?

1. View extends from TemplateView class.
2. A model is attached to the view in the initialize function (class Backbone application).
3. A template function return the template id associated to the view.

And that's all!

Note that following events will be triggered:

• render:loading when the view start rendering (before any template download and rendering).
• render:success when the view is fully rendered (templates are fetched, view is up to date).
• render:error when the view cannot be rendered because of missing templates.

How it works?

The render method comes with a default implementation:

• Get the templates to fetch.
• Without templates, the render method do nothing).
• Otherwise:
  • Trigger render:loading event and execute the view onBeforeRender method.
  • Get the default template manager of the view (basically, calls templateManager method view).
  • Download the template using its id (what happens here precisely depends on the template manager, more details later).
  • Calls the toJSON method from the view: by default return an object containing a model property (with model.toJSON as the value) and/or a collection property (result of collection.toJSON method).
  • Render the view using default compile function (use _.template under the hood).
  • Trigger render:success event and execute view onRendered and onRender methods without errors.
  • Trigger render:error event and execute view onRendered and onRenderError if something bad happened.

How templates are downloaded?

By default, templates are downloaded using Backbone.ajax.

• The default http method is GET.
• The requested URL is built with:
  • The template manager prefix (default is /templates/).
  • The template id.
  • The template manager suffix (default is .template.html).

In the example below, the requested URL will be /templates/foo.template.html. Note that all downloaded templates are put in a cache, so don't worry about network request when you render a view several times!

Override default template manager

By default, the template manager fetch templates from a remote server using Backbone.ajax. Let's say you want to define your DOM in your HTML, such as:

<script type="text/template" data-template-id="my-template">
  <div>Hello <%= name %></div>
</script>

You can override the default template with an instance of the DomTemplateManager:

import Mustache from 'mustache';
import {overrideTemplateManager, DomTemplateManager} from 'backbone-template-manager';

// Just given an instance of the new template manager as the first parameter.
// Should be done when your application starts.
overrideTemplateManager(new DomTemplateManager({
  // Override default selector.
  // Default is `[data-template-id="${templateId}"]`
  selector: templateId => `#${templateId}`
}));

By default, the selector in the DOM will be defined as [data-template-id="${templateId}"], but it may be override (see below).

Now, the template method of your view must return the selector in the DOM to query the DOM appropriately:

import Backbone from 'backbone';
import {TemplateView} from 'backbone-template-manager';

export class MyView extends TemplateView {
  initialize() {
    this.model = new Backbone.Model({
      id: 1,
      name: 'John Doe'
    });
  }

  templates() {
    return 'my-template';
  }
}

Note that the overrideTemplateManager method can also be used to override the default prefix, suffix and method parameters:

import Mustache from 'mustache';
import {overrideTemplateManager, RemoteTemplateManager} from 'backbone-template-manager';

// Just given an instance of the new template manager as the first parameter.
// Should be done when your application starts.
overrideTemplateManager(new RemoteTemplateManager({
  prefix: '/app/templates',
  suffix: '.mustache',
  method: 'JSONP'
}));

Override default compile function

The default compile function can be overridden with a custom implementation. Let's say you want to use Mustache (or Handlebars) as the default template engine:

import Mustache from 'mustache';
import {overrideCompile} from 'backbone-template-manager';

// Override the compile function.
// Compile function must return a function that can be used to render template
// with data model.
// Should be done when your application starts.
overrideCompile(html => {
  return data => Mustache.render(html, data);
});

Dealing with partials

Some libraries, such as Mustache, allow you to define partials:

<div>
  <span>Hello {{ name }}</span>
  <div>{{ > user-view }}</div>
</div>

In the template below, user-view is a partial that can be set during template compilation:

Mustache.render(mainTemplate, data, {
  'user-view': '<div>User information</div>'
});

This little library can deal with partials, simply defined an array of templates in your view:

import Backbone from 'backbone';
import {TemplateView} from 'backbone-template-manager';

export class MyView extends TemplateView {
  initialize() {
    this.model = new Backbone.Model({
      id: 1,
      name: 'John Doe'
    });
  }

  templates() {
    return ['my-template', 'user-view'];
  }
}

When an array is defined as a template view, the first entry in the array will be the first argument of the compile function, other templates will be given as second argument as a dictionary where the entry is the template id and the value is the template. You can now render templates easily:

import Mustache from 'mustache';
import {overrideCompile} from 'backbone-template-manager';

overrideCompile((html, partials) => {
  return data => Mustache.render(html, data, partials);
});

Dealing with JST

The remote template manager can be optimized by sending all templates in a javascript file stored in a variable (see here) and query this dictionary instead of querying the remote server:

import Mustache from 'mustache';
import {overrideTemplateManager, RemoteTemplateManager} from 'backbone-template-manager';

// Just given an instance of the new template manager as the first parameter.
// Should be done when your application starts.
overrideTemplateManager(new RemoteTemplateManager({
  JST: true
}));

Three options are available:

• JST: true: assume that templates may already exist in window.JST.
• JST: '__JST__': assume that templates may already exist in window.__JST__.
• JST: {}: send the templates object directly during the construction.

If templates does not exist in the JST variable, a classic HTTP request will be made as a fallback. Note that templates should be stored with the template id as the key (not the full URL), for example:

import Backbone from 'backbone';
import {TemplateView} from 'backbone-template-manager';

export class MyView extends TemplateView {
  initialize() {
    this.model = new Backbone.Model({
      id: 1,
      name: 'John Doe'
    });
  }

  templates() {
    return 'my-template';
  }
}

The template manager will assume that window.JST will be equal to:

{
  "my-template": "<div>My Template</div>"
}

History

This little library has been created in 2013 (still used in production) and open sourced in 2016 after a rewrite in ES6.

License

MIT.