Gasoline Turbo

Generic Template (but "Gasoline Turbo" smells better)

Generates Blaze, React and Angular template from the same input.

It works both as a command line tool or you can add it as any other npm module to your node.js and/or Meteor application. Works client-side in the browser too.

Project status

Under development - just started.

Angular is not supported yet. Contributions are welcome - please write getAngular function.

Example apps

Meteor Kitchen

• Meteor Kitchen UI is using gasoline-turbo. See Preview video at Youtube.

Blaze to React online converter

• Live application is here: blaze2react. You can find source code (kitchen project) here.

Related projects

• blaze2gasoline - converts Meteor Blaze template (html and js) to input for gasoline-turbo (and from that point you can convert to React or Angular).

Usage

When installed globally as npm module npm install -g gasoline-turbo, you can run CLI from your terminal:

gasoline-turbo -i input.json -o output_dir -f blaze
	-i, --input	Input file
	-o, --output	Output directory
	-f, --format	Output format. Can be "blaze", "react", "angular" or "html". Default: "blaze"
	-k, --kitchen	Generate "Meteor Kitchen" specific code.
	-c, --container	Generate "Meteor" container (React only).
	-w, --overwrite	Overwrite existing output files.

Or you can add it to your node.js (or Meteor) application by running meteor npm install --save gasoline-turbo and in your code:

const gasoline = require("gasoline-turbo");

(works both-client side and server-side)

See API reference for list of exposed functions.

Input

Input is object describing each html node plus control structures frequently used in client-side rendering templates such as "condition", "loop", etc.

Root of the object contains array of templates:

{
	templates: [

	]
}

Template object

Template object:

{
	type: "template",
	name: "HomePage",

	children: [
	],

	handlers: [
	],

	helpers: [
	]
}

Example

{
	templates: [
		{
			type: "template",
			name: "HomePage",

			children: [
			],

			handlers: [
			],

			helpers: [
			]
		}

	]
}

This input will produce:

Blaze

HTML

<template name="HomePage">
</template>

JS

Template.HomePage.events({
	
});

Template.HomePage.helpers({
	
});

React

JSX

export const HomePage = React.createClass({
	render() {
		return (
			<div></div>
		);
	}
});

Angular 1

(not implemented yet)

Angular 2

(not implemented yet)

HTML node

Each object's children array can contain html node description like this:

{
   "type": "html",
   "element": "div",
   "attributes": [
      {
         "name": "class",
         "value": "container"
      }
   ],

   "children": [
   ],

   "events": [
   ]
}

That will produce:

Blaze

<div class="container"></div>

If output format is React, attribute names will be properly renamed:

<div className="container"></div>

Text node

Each object's children array can contain text node. Text node cannot have children. Text will be inserted into parent node.

{
   "type": "text",
   "text": "Hello World!"
}

Example div with text:

{
   "type": "html",
   "element": "div",
   "attributes": [
      {
         "name": "class",
         "value": "container"
      }
   ],
   "children": [
      {
         "type": "text",
         "text": "Hello World!"
      }
   ]
}

That will produce:

<div class="container">
	Hello World!
</div>

Helpers

Helper functions are defined in template object and can be used inside any element (as text or attribute name/value)

{
	templates: [
		{
			type: "template",
			name: "HomePage",

			children: [
				{
					type: "html",
					element: "button",

					attributes: [
						name: "class",
						value: "{{buttonClass}}"
					],

					children: [
						{
							type: "text",
							text: "Click Me!"
						}
					]
				}
			],

			helpers: [
				{
					type: "helper",
					name: "buttonClass",
					arguments: [],
					code: "return \"btn btn-success\""
				}
			]
		}
	]
}

Events

Event handler is defined in element's parent "template" object, and can be attached to any element, for example on "click":

{
	templates: [
		{
			type: "template",
			name: "HomePage",

			children: [
				{
					type: "html",
					element: "button",
					selector: ".nice-button",

					attributes: [
						name: "class",
						value: "nice-button"
					],

					children: [],

					events: [
           			   {
                             "type": "event",
                             "event": "onclick",
                             "handler": "onNiceClick"
                       }
					]
				}
			],

			handlers: [
				{
					type: "handler",
					name: "onNiceClick",
					code: "alert(\"Yeah!\");"
				}
			]
		}

	]
}

selector is used in blaze, in this example click to any element with class .nice-button will execute handler. event is HTML event attribute name, for example: onclick

Resulting code:

Blaze

Template.HomePage.events({
	"click .nice-button": function(e, t) {
		alert("Yeah!");
	}	
});

React

export const HomePage = React.createClass({
	onNiceClick(e) {
		alert("Yeah!");
	},

	render() {
		return (
			<button className="nice-button" onClick={this.onNiceClick}></div>
		);
	}
});

Loop

Each object's children array can contain loop node.

{
   "type": "loop",
   "dataset": "customers",
   "children": [
      {
         "type": "text",
         "text": "{{customers.name}}"
      }
   ]
}

That will produce:

Blaze

HTML

{{#each customers}}
	{{name}}
{{/each}}

React

JSX

{
	customers.map(function(item) {
		return item.name;
	})
}

Angular 1

(not implemented yet)

Angular 2

(not implemented yet)

Condition

Conditional rendering. If expression evals true render one content else render another content. children array can contain only two objects: one of type "conditon-true" and another of type "condition-false". If condition evals true, content of condition-true will be rendered, otherwise content of condition-false will be rendered.

{
	"type": "condition",
	"condition": "currentUser",

	"children": [
		{
			"type": "condition-true",

			"children": [
			]
		},

		{
			"type": "condition-false",

			"children": [
			]
		}
	]
}

Example input:

{
	"type": "condition",
	"condition": "currentUser",

	"children": [
		{
			"type": "condition-true",

			"children": [
				{
					"type": "text",
					"text": "You are logged in!"
				}
			]
		},

		{
			"type": "condition-false",

			"children": [
				{
					"type": "text",
					"text": "You are not logged in!"
				}
			]
		}
	]
}

Output:

Blaze

HTML

{{#if currentUser}}
	You are logged in!
{{else}}
	You are not logged in!
{{/if}}

React

JSX

{
	currentUser ? "You are logged in!" : "You are not logged in!"
}

Angular 1

(not implemented yet)

Angular 2

(not implemented yet)

API Reference

randomString(len = 17)

Simply returns unique random string. (e.g. XlE1N31VZA7iGLG43M)

addId(input, force = true)

Fuction iterates through entire input tree and sets each object's _id member to random string. If argument force is set to true then function sets _id even if object already have _id set (overwrites _id with new unique random value).

removeId(input)

Fuction iterates through entire input tree and removes each object's _id member.

findObject(input, objectId)

Searches input for object which _id equals objectId argument and returns that object. If object is not found then function returns null.

findParentObject(input, objectId)

Function returns object's parent.

findParentOfType(input, objectId, parentType)

Function searches the tree upwards starting from object's direct parent and returns first element that matches given type.

Example:

var template = findParentOfType(input, obj._id, "template");

selectObject(input, objectId)

Object which _id equals objectId will be marked as selected (member selected will be set to true). All other objects will be unselected (member selected will be removed).

findSelectedObject(input)

Function will return (first) object which selected property is true.

acceptChildren(input, objectId)

Function returns true if object can contain children. Otherwise returns false.

addObject(input, parentId, object)

Function will add new object as a child of the object which _id equals parentId.

removeObject(input, objectId)

Object which _id equals objectId argument will be removed from the input tree.

getBlaze(input, callback)

Function returns blaze html and js.

Example:

getBlaze(input, function(err, html, js) {
	if(err) {
		alert(err);
		return;
	}

	console.log(html);
	console.log(js);
});

getReact(input, callback)

Function returns react jsx.

Example:

getReact(input, function(err, jsx) {
	if(err) {
		alert(err);
		return;
	}

	console.log(jsx);
});

getAngular(input, callback)

Sorry, angular is not supported yet

getHTML(input, callback)

Function returns pure static HTML - any control structures (loops, conditions etc.) are ignored, but their html content is included.

Example:

getHTML(input, function(err, html) {
	if(err) {
		alert(err);
		return;
	}

	console.log(html);
});

getWireframe(input, templateName)

Function returns static HTML which can be used by visual UI.

Each element is encapsulated into <div class="gasoline-turbo" data-id="OBJECT ID"> ... </div> or <span class="gasoline-turbo" data-id="OBJECT ID"> ... </span> ("div" or "span" - depending on is element inline or block-level entity).

Example:

var wireframe = getWireframe(input, "homePage");

To be continued...