Axilla

Simple Node.js view templating using handlebars.

Features

• Synchronous interface with template caching
• Flexible API

Install with npm install axilla

var axilla = require('axilla');

Example

Give the following directory structure

* /Users/ben/projects/example/
  * components/
    * users/
      * _form.html.mustache
      * index.html.mustache
      * new.html.mustache
      * edit.html.mustache
      * show.html.mustache
    * todos/
      * _widget.html.mustache
      * index.html.mustache
      * show.html.mustache
  * public/
    * templates/
      * one_off_template.html.mustache

Axilla first needs to be configured with the location of any/all templates.

var baseDir = "/Users/ben/projects/example/components";
axilla.configure(baseDir)
// has now stored a reference to all files ending in .mustache in /components

Axilla can be configured multiple times with different locations of templates.

var secondBaseDir = "/Users/ben/projects/example/public";
axilla.configure(secondBaseDir);
// has now stored a reference to all files ending in .mustache in /public

This will find all templates ending in .mustache at any depth in /Users/ben/projects/example/public and /Users/ben/projects/example/components. Axilla will store files that are prefixed with an underscore as partials for use within other views. Inside of the mustache template, they can be referenced with the partial helper:

<div class="new-user-form">{{partial "users/form"}}</div>

When referencing a partial inside the views, the filename does not include the prefixed underscore.

To render a template, call axilla.render passing the path and filename (minus the extensions) relative to the directory supplied to axilla.configure, i.e.

var indexHtml = axilla.render('users/index', {users: []});
var showHtml = axilla.render('todos/show', {todo: {}});
var oneOffHtml = axilla.render('templates/one_off_template', {});

We can shorten this by invoking axilla with defaults.

var render = axilla('users');
var html = render('index', {users: []});

API