requirejs-tpl

This is a fork which adds the features mentioned under the 0.0.3 release in the Changelog below

This is an AMD loader for UnderscoreJS micro-templates which can be used as a drop-in replacement to ZeeAgency/requirejs-tpl

Overview

• Uses the _.template() engine maintained by the UnderscoreJS team.
• Uses the official text loader plugin maintained by the RequireJS team.
• You don't have to specify the template file extension (.html is assumed, but this is configurable).

Notes:

• Both libraries can be removed at build-time using r.js.
• The extension .html is assumed, and this makes loading templates similar to loading JavaScript files with RequireJS (all extensions are assumed).

Changelog

0.0.1 Initial version

0.0.2 Various updates:

• Add template path option to tpl.js (thanks drewrichards)
• Updated require.js to 2.1.8 , and r.js to 2.1.8
• Updated underscore.js to 1.5.2

0.0.3 (Unreleased)

• Add option to configure underscore's template settings (i.e. to customize template delimeters)

Installation

Download UnderscoreJS and RequireJS-text:

• UndescoreJS
• RequireJS-text

Typically, you would place them in a scripts/libs folder then create a scripts/main.js file to alias them and to shim UndescoreJS:

require.config({
  paths: {
    underscore: 'libs/underscore',
    text: 'libs/text'
    tpl: 'libs/tpl'
  },
  shim: {
    'underscore': {
      exports: '_'
    }
  }
});

Usage

Specify the plugin using tpl! followed by the template file:

require(['backbone', 'tpl!template'], function (Backbone, template) {
  return Backbone.View.extend({
    initialize: function(){
      this.render();
    },
    render: function(){
      this.$el.html(template({message: 'hello'}));
  });
});

Customization

You can specify the template file extension in your main.js:

require.config({

  // some paths and shims

  tpl: {
    extension: '.tpl' // default = '.html'
  }
});

Underscore allows you to configure the style of templating (more specifically, the syntax for how variables are interpolated, conditional statements and comments). Refer to the templateSettings variable.

Similarly to setting the template file extension, you can set templateSettings in your main.js:

require.config({

    // Use Mustache style syntax for variable interpolation

    templateSettings: {
        evaluate : /\{\[([\s\S]+?)\]\}/g,
        interpolate : /\{\{([\s\S]+?)\}\}/g
    }
});

Optimization

This plugin is compatible with r.js.

Optimization brings three benefits to a project:

• The templates are bundled within your code and not dynamically loaded which reduces the number of HTTP requests.
• The templates are pre-compiled before being bundled which reduces the work the client has to do.
• You can use the compiled, non-minimized version of the templates to step over the code in a debugger.

The most important build options are:

stubModules: ['underscore', 'text', 'tpl']

The list of modules to stub out in the optimized file, i.e. the code is replaced with define('module',{}); by r.js

removeCombined: true

Removes from the output folder the files combined into a build.

Example

Using an existing web server

Copy the example and example-build folders to your web server (text is not compatible with the file:// protocol and opening index.hml directly from your browser will not work).

Using a test server

Alternatively, you can use Connect and NodeJS to spin a web server:

Install connect using npm and launch the server with NodeJS:

  $ npm install -g connect
  $ npm link connect
  $ node server.js

Go to http://localhost:9000/example. Your browser should load:

• index.html
• require.js
• main.js
• tpl.js
• underscore.js
• text.js
• message.html

Go to http://localhost:9000/example-build. Your browser should load:

• index.html
• require.js
• main.js