mengine

men-gine, it has nothing to do with gender. Men comes from the dutch verb mennen which means lead.

Motivation

I wanted a package that allowed me to swap template engines with minimal configuration and changes. After looking at the consolidate package code I had a few questions.

Why is the template name method the one that renders a file?

Why does the render method renders a string template?

Why isn't it possible to use the template engine directly?

Why are all the methods in one file?

The answer to these questions lead me to create a new package.

The things that are important for this package are:

• making the switch to another language as easy as possible
• allow the user to be able to (allmost) all the power template enigne provides

Usage

var engine = require('mengine')('ejs');

The engine variable exposes:

• engine: the template engine instance
• renderString: it the template engine supports asynchrone actions
• renderStringSync: if the template engine supports synchrone actions
• renderFile: it the template engine supports asynchrone actions
• renderFileSync: if the template engine supports synchrone actions

Mengine has a second parameter which allows you to add or overwrite the template engine configuration.

config/template_engine/ejs.js

var ejs = require('ejs');

module.exports = function ejsConfig(){
    ejs.open = '<%';
    ejs.close = '%>'

    var out = {};

    out.engine = ejs;

    out.renderFile = ejs.renderFile;

    out.renderString = function(str, options, fn){
        try{
            fn(null, ejs.render(str, options));
        }catch(er){
            fn(err);
        }
    };

    return out;
};

The call from a root file would be;

var engine = require('mengine')('ejs', './config/template/ejs');

If there is no custom configuration file mengine will search for a configuration file in the lib/config directory. The following template engines are supported:

• atpl+
• eco
• ect * +
• ejs * -
• haml-coffee -
• haml
• handlebars -
• hogan * +
• jade +
• jazz
• just * +
• liquor
• lodash *
• mustache * -
• nunjucks +
• qejs * +
• ractive * -
• swig +
• templayed
• toffee +
• underscore *
• walrus
• whiskers -

If the template language allows the change of the open and close strings, marked above with *, the package configuration will set them to ${ and } respectively.

Template languages marked with + and - allow subtemplates. The ones with - only have partials. The ones with + have inheritance and partials.

Tests

Look in the test directory for more documentation.

Run the tests after installing the package with npm test.