Precedent

Precedent meta-templating engine, for when you want templates ... for templates.

Template Patterns

Precedent works on the concept of "Template Patterns". These are regions of text that are replaced by their template function. Because patterns are defined in a tree data structure, nested patterns (such as <%, <%=, <$$ and <) properly get parsed in the same process run.

So, for instance, you could create a pattern like so:

// Load the precedent library
var libPrecedent = require('../source/Precedent.js').new();

// Add the pattern
libPrecedent.addPattern('{Name', '}', 'David Bowie');

// Parse a string with the pattern
console.log(libPrecedent.parseString('This is just a short message for {Name}.');
// Anything inbetween the start and end is ignored in this case, since it is a string substitution.
console.log(libPrecedent.parseString('This is just a short message for {Name THIS TEXT IS IGNORED}.  We hope to ignore the previous text.');

This would output the following to the console:

This is just a short message for David Bowie.
This is just a short message for David Bowie.  We hope to ignore the previous text.

precedent.addPattern(patternStart, patternEnd, parser)

Add a pattern to the string processor.

// Pass in a string
libPrecedent.addPattern('{Name', '}', 'David Bowie');

// Or a function
libPrecedent.addPattern('{Name', '}', (pString)=>{return pString.length;});

Each time a pattern is matched, anything between the patternStart and patternEnd will be passed into the parse function.

patternStart

Type: String

The beginning portion of a pattern.

patternEnd

Type: String

The ending portion of a pattern.

parser

Type: String or Function Default: Echo content between the pattern start and end.

precedent.parseString(contentString)

Parse a string with the processor.

libPrecedent.parseString('This is just a short message for {Name}.'

contentString

Type: String

The string of content to parseg