Cask

Cask is a micro-framework for creating template-based web pages with Express. Cask currently only supports Mustache templating.

Basic Usage

npm install cask

Cask allows pages to be declaritively defined as modules similar to Connect middleware. The page can then be rendered by passing a Response instance, a context object, and the middleware callback. For example:

page.js
=======

var pages = require("cask").pages;

module.exports = function (response, item, next) {
    pages("templates").load("page.html", function (error, response) {
        page.addStyleSheet("/static/css/style.css");
        page.renderTo(response, { result: item }, next);
    });
};

app.js
======

var app  = express(),
    page = require("./page");

. . .

app.get("/page", function (request, response, next) {
    var item = { message: "hello world" };
    page(response, item, next);
});

API Details

cask.pages([templateDirectory])

• templateDirectory - Defaults to CWD. The base directory to load load templates from.

Creates a new PageLoader for loading pages.

PageLoader.load(template, callback)

• template - the file name of the template to create the page from.
• callback - called when the template has been loaded and compiled. The callback is passed two arguments (error, page).

Creates a Page instance from a template file.

Page.addPartial(name, template, callback)

• name - the name by which the partial will be refernced in templates.
• template - the template that defines the partial.
• callback - called when the partial has been loaded and compiled. The callback is passed two arguments (error, page). page is a self-reference to the Page.

Makes a partial available to the rendering context.

Page.addScript(href)

• href - the URL of the script to add to the page.

addScript allows a page definition to declare a script dependency. The page will try to make smart use of scripts and will only load each script once (regardless of how many times the same script is declared) at the end of the page body.

Page.addStyleSheet(href)

• href - the URL of the stylesheet to add to the page.

addStyleSheet allows a page definition to declare a stylesheet dependency. The page will try to make smart use of stylesheets and will only load each stylesheet once (regardless of how many times the same stylesheet is declared).

Page.renderTo(response, context, next)

• response - the Express response instance that the page content should be rendered to.
• context - a hash of attributes to be used by the template engine.
• next - the 'next middleware' callback. This is typically used for error handling.

Cause the page content to be rendered as a response to a request.