Pointy is a template language for embedding JavaScript in HTML.

It was heavily inspired by the Razor template language.

It works with both Node.js and in the browser.

Installation

Use npm or download the source from GitHub.

With Node, just npm install pointy and then require('pointy') in your code.

In the browser, just include pointy.js and there will be a global variable named pointy that you can use.

Syntax

Expressions are evaluated by prefixing them with the @ character:

Hello, @user!

Expressions can be continued with dots, parentheses, or brackets:

Hello, @user.names[0].toUpperCase()!

Expressions are terminated as soon as a non-identifier character is encountered (! in the previous example).

If you need more control, use parentheses:

Hello, @(user.name.first + ' ' + user.name.last)!

Expressions that start with if, for, and while are interpreted as statements and terminated with }. Inside the braces, the parser figures out if a line is code or content automatically:

@if (user.authenticated) {
    var name = user.name.first;
    <p>Hello, @name!</p>
}

Use the <text> tag to surround plain text:

@if (user.authenticated) {
    var name = user.name.first;
    <text>Hello, @name!</text>
}

The <text> tag is stripped does not appear in the output.

You can also use @: to indicate that the rest of the line is plain text:

@if (user.isAuthenticated) {
    var name = user.names[0].first;
    @:Hello, @name!
}

For more control over statements, use braces with your @ signs:

@{
    // Any number of JavaScript statements can go here.
}

See the examples folder for more examples.

API

The easiest function to use is pointy.render(source, data). It parses the template source, compiles it into a function, invokes the function with the data, and returns the rendered output:

var html = pointy.render(source, data);

To cache the compiled functions, use the pointy.compile(source) function which takes in the template source and returns a function that accepts the data and returns the rendered output:

var fn = pointy.compile(source);
var output = fn(data);

This is compatible with Express so you can register the pointy module as a template engine:

app.register('.jshtml', require('pointy'));

Tests

With Node.js:

npm install --dev
npm test

In the browser: test/test.html