hbs

Express.js view engine wrapper for handlebars.js, an extension of Mustache template language.

Why

While Handlbars.js is already a Node.js module, it cannot be used directly as an Express.js view engine. This module will fill that role until Handlebars.js adds Express.js view engine support directly.

Installation

npm install hbs

Usage

To set hbs as default view engine:

app.set("view engine", "hbs");

To your own version of Handlebars:

require('hbs').handlebars = require('/path/to/handlebars');

require('hbs').handlebarsPath = '/path/to/handlebars';

Tricks

Handlebars support view helper functions which comes in handy. For example, following code allow view templates to affect head section which is typically rendered from layout template.

layout.hbs

<html>
	<head>
		<title>{{page_title}}</title>
		<script src="js/common.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
		<script src="js/{{app_name}}.js" type="text/javascript" charset="utf-8"></script>
		<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="common.css">
		<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" href="{{app_name}}.css">
	</head>
	<body>
	{{{body}}}
	</body>
</html>

myview.hbs

{{#properties}}
	"app_name": "myapp",
	"page_title": "My View"
{{/properties}}
<div>blah</div>
...

view rendering code

var options = {
	cache: true,
	compile: true,
	locals {
		...
	},
	blockHelpers: {
		properties: function (context, fn) {
				var props = JSON.parse("{" + fn(this) + "}");
				for (var prop in props) {
						if (props.hasOwnProperty(prop)) {
								context[prop] = props[prop];
						}
				}
				return "";
		}
	}
};
res.render("myview", options);

Migrating from 0.0.3 from 0.0.2

Handlebars' block-helpers now needs to be in blockHelpers (see example above) instead of locals.

awirick/hbs

hbs