chibiprint

v1.0.0-final.1511271807

Published

2 years ago

A really tiny template engine for Node.js.

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jsteinbeck

ChibiPrint

A really tiny template engine for Node.js. It takes a template file and a JSON data file and produces a rendered string. ChibiPrint templates can include other template files, too!

Installation

npm install -g chibiprint

Using ChibiPrint from the command line

Printing the rendered output:

chibiprint template.html data.json

Writing the output to a file:

chibiprint template.html data.json output.html

Using ChibiPrint as a JavaScript module

var fs = require("fs");
var render = require("chibiprint").render;
var data = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync("data.json"));

fs.writeFileSync("output.html", render("template.html", data));

Template example

File data.json:

{
    "title": "My cool blog",
    "posts": [
        {
            "title": "Today I ate noodles",
            "text": "They were really delicious. I can recommend it.",
            "tags": [
                "noodles", "delicious"
            ]
        },
        {
            "title": "Went to see Iron Maiden",
            "text": "Best. Concert. Ever. 'Nough said."
        }
    ]
}

File template.html:

{!include header.html}
        <h1>{$title}</h1>
        
        <div class="posts">
            {!list $posts post.html}
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

File header.html:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <header>
        <title>{$title}</title>
    </header>
    <body>

File post.html:

            <div class="post">
                <h2>{$title}</h2>
                <div class="body">
                    {$text}
                </div>
                {!? $tags include tags.html}
            </div>

File tags.html:

                <div class="tags">
                    {!list $tags tag.html}
                </div>

File tag.html:

                    <a class="tag" href="tag/{$content}/">{$content}</a>

Syntax

{$[variable name]}

Prints the content of a variable. If the variable doesn't exist, nothing is printed.

{!list [variable] [template file]}

The list command renders the items in an array or object using another template file.

If the item itself is an object, the object's properties are available in the list template as variables. The parent template's variables are available in the list template prefixed with "parent.", e.g. {$parent.title}.

If the item is a primitve value like string or number, {$key} can be used for the item's key or index, and {$content} prints the item's value.

{!include [template file]}

The include command renders another template with the current template's variables.

{!? $[variable name] [command name] [arg1] ... [argN]}

The ? command executes another command with arg1 to argN as the arguments if the specified variable exists and is truthy.

Adding new commands

You can extend ChibiPrint by adding new commands it can utilize:

var render = require("chibiprint").render;

render.commands["hello-world"] = function (base, vars /*, arg1, ..., argN */) {
    
    // base is the base path / folder of the current template
    // vars is an object containing the available variables
    
    // commands can have any number of optional arguments
    
    // commands must return a string:
    return "Hello world!";
};

API

render(templateFile, data)

Renders the file located at templateFile using the key-value pairs in data as variables.

render.commands

The available commands. This object can be extended to add new commands to ChibiPrint.

engine()

Creates a new render function. This is useful if you want to have render functions with a different command vocabulary.

License

BSD-3-Clause. See LICENSE file for details.