inflate-template

This library is responsible for inflating a template with data.

It provides the 'export' functionality for Data-Forge Plot and Data-Forge Notebook.

Premise

A template is any number of assets (text files, JS files, HTML files, etc) in a directory. Each asset is a Handlebars template that can be expanded by data.

A template can be expanded in memory or expanded and written another directory on disk.

This library is used by Data-Forge Plot and Data-Forge Notebook to expand a data set into a web page, either in memory and then rendered to a PNG or PDF file or then exported to disk as a browser-based visualization.

Creating a template

A template is a directory that contains template files that will be inflated with data when the template is expanded. Files to be inflated live under the 'assets' sub-directory in the template directory.

This repository contains an example template under the test-template directory. Please use this to understand the basics of how a template is constructed.

A template can contain a template.json configuration file and a test-data.json. By convention files in the root directory or any other sub-directory other than the 'assets' sub-directory are not templates files, they can be configuration files, supporting files, build scripts, etc, but they are not inflated as part of the template.

Programmatic Usage

Installation

npm install --save inflate-template

Require

JavaScript:

const { inflateTemplate, exportTemplate } = require('inflate-template');

TypeScript:

import { inflateTemplate, exportTemplate } from 'inflate-template';

Usage

Expand in memory:

const data = { /* ... your data to be expanded into the template ... */ }
const options = {
    templatePath: "<path-to-load-your-template-from>",
};
const template = await inflateTemplate(data, options);

console.log(template.files.length); // Print number of files in the template.

const fileContent = await template.files[0].expand(); // Expand first files content.

const outputPath = "<directory-to-export-expanded-template-to>";
await template.files[0].export(outputPath); // Export first file to output directory.

Expand to disk:

const data = { /* ... your data to be expanded into the template ... */ }
const outputPath = "<directory-to-export-expanded-template-to>";
const options = {
    templatePath: "<path-to-load-your-template-from">,
};
await exportTemplate(data, outputPath, options); // All expanded files are written to output directory.

Command line usage

This can also be used from the command line to test export templates.

Before using from the command line make sure your template contains a 'test-data.json' that is used to fill out the template.

To use from the command line please install globally like this:

npm install -g inflate-template

You can also omit the -g and just install locally, but then make sure you prefix all the subsequent commands with npx.

To inflate and export a template:

inflate-template export --template=<path-to-your-web-page-template> --out="<path-to-output-your-expanded-template>"

You can also add the --overwrite argument to overite an existing export.

Template configuration

The file template.json can be used to configure a template:

{
    "expand": "**/*",
    "noExpand": "node_modules/"
}

All fields are optional.

Fields can be arrays as well:

{
    "expand": ["src/**/*" ],
    "noExpand": [ "dist/", "node_modules/" ]
}