Handybars

A micro templating engine inspired by Handlebars, but with several notable changes designed to make it more versatile and significantly smaller. Handybars is not Handlebars compatible and cannot be used as a drop in replacement, but the syntax is very similar.

Note, this project is very much a work in progress, the api and behavior can and will change.

How Handybars Differs from Handlebars

• Handybars is interpreted, not compiled (for now).
• Each template maintains its own environment scope, there is no global scope for all templates.
• There are no explicit helpers or partials, any function or partial in the template or environment scope can be invoked as a helper.
  • Use handybars.partial(templateText) (or import { partial } from 'handybars') to parse a partial template.
  • Use template.setPartial(name, templateText) to add a partial to a template's environment scope.
• There is currently no support for inline partials.
• ../ does not exist. Instead, use @parent. to access the previous scope. However, you may find you don't need this unless a local scope's keys collide with a parent scope's keys.
• There is no built in whitespace control
• Handybars does not support the as syntax, such as {{#each users as | user |}}
• {{#each}} can iterate any Array, Set, Map or plain Object.
• Blocks may contain arrays: {{#each [ '1st' '2nd' '3rd' ]}}
• Blocks support inline value lookups: {{order[request.id].creationDate}}
• Blocks do NOT support the value.[N] lookup syntax (note the period before the bracket)
• The options object passed to helpers has a different structure.

Usage

npm install handybars

Usage

In CommonJS:

const handybars = require('handybars');

In ES6:

import handybars from 'handybars';

Usage:

const template = handybars("<p>{{author.first}} {{author.last}}</p>");
const html = template({
	author: {
		first: 'John',
		last: 'Doe',
	}
});

Any property can be used as a boolean truthy check.

handybars(`
	<div class="entry">
	<h1>{{book.title}}</h1>
	{{#author}}<h2>{{book.author.first}} {{book.author.last}}</h2>{{/author}}
	</div>
`)({
	book: {
		title: 'Mort'
		author: {
			first: 'Terry',
			last: 'Pratchett',
		}
	}
})

Any property that is a function will be executed as a helper.

handybars(`
	{{lcase "HELLO"}}
`)({
	lcase: (s) => s.toLowerCase(),
})

Arrays can be created inline in logic blocks

handybars(`
	{{#each [ '1st' 2 third ]}}
`)({
	third: '3rd'
})