EJS to AMD conversion helpers

This module lets you use EJS easily on the browser in an AMD environment - like RequireJS.

It provides:

• connect middleware to serve the complied templates for development
• command line utility that puts files in the right place for something like RequireJS to bundle
• a method to compile EJS templates to AMD wrapped functions

Installation

npm install ejs-amd

Components

These are the interesting bits:

Connect middleware

The middleware is there for when you are developing. It intercepts requests for template js and compiles and serves the templates directly. This means that you don't need to make any changes to the browser-side code.

var ejsAmd = require('ejs-amd');
 
app.use('/js/templates/', ejsAmd.middleware({
  views: 'path/to/your/ejs'
}));

Object specified to the middleware() function will be passed to the ejs.compile() function (except for the views property). It can be used to change the open and close tags or disable the compileDebug flag.

If set, a value of the views property will be prepended to the request's URL. Otherwise, a value of the express setting views will be used (app.get("views")).

Compile and wrap the templates

ejs-amd --from views/ --to public/js/templates

Goes through all the .ejs files and compiles them to JavaScript, and then wraps them for AMD loaders.

ejs-amd accepts the following options:

• -f, --from <dir> - look for ejs templates in <dir>
• -t, --to <dir> - output the compiled js to <dir>
• -o, --open <otag> - set the open tag to <otag>
• -c, --close <ctag> - set the close tag to <ctag>
• -d, --compileDebug - set the compileDebug flag to TRUE

Using the EJS templates on the browser

Assuming that you have used RequireJS your browser JavaScript will now look something like this:

require([ 'templates/person' ], function(personTemplate) {
  var rendered_content = personTemplate({ name: 'Joe Bloggs' });
});

And you can use exactly the same template on the server side!

Inspiration

• https://github.com/mysociety/node-jade-amd