Javascript template engine : why and which ?

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1. Introduction
2. State of art
3. The choice
4. Playing around

Introduction

Hi there, as I needed a template engine for one of my customer, I looked around to find the one that was the best fitting my needs. My requirements where the following :

• Cross-browser
• Easy to learn
• Allow easy internationalization
• Library independent
• Well documented and maintained
• Possibility to add custom helpers and modifiers
• Process relies on a compilation (to avoid multiple compilation)

Well, let's see what's on the place.

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State of art

Several client side templates engines are available, here are some that kept my attention :

• JavaScript Templates (JST)
• tenjin js
• Miro
• jTemplates
• ESTE

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The choice

I finally decided to use JST that seemed to be the one that best fits my needs. MModifiers are simple to declare and to use for variables modification (such as upper-case or html sanitize-ing), and macros seems to be the way to declare helpers.
For the Internationalization, as I am using JSON datas it seems to be a simple workaround that can be achieved using a little layer aver the templateObject.

An other point that kept my attention is that syntax is most likely the same as the Javascript one, and that's a good point not to have to learn a new syntax.
Last but not least, it is possible to use inline JavaScript statements.

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Playing around

Here comes the interesting part, it's time for tests ;-)
I'll keep you in touch with further posts including some of my code, but for now, I'll just give the documentation link

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