Handlebars on Rails
Handlebars is one of the more popular JavaScript templating languages currently in use. Just like we have the ERB templating language to generate HTML in Rails, we can use a JavaScript templating language to generate HTML on the client side. This way we don't have to construct each element manually using jQuery.
As a side topic, this repository also includes the JsRoutes gem, which provides a handy way to access the routes of your Rails app from JavaScript. Check the README of that project for installation and usage.
Demo
The /articles path in this app returns fake static JSON data for a list of articles. We'll use an Ajax request to retrieve this data, and pass it to a Handlebars template that will render the articles onto the page. The reference code for the finished demo is in reference.md.
The stylesheets used for the lab might interfere with this demo – add ?no_styles=true onto the end of the URL to suppress them.
Lab
At the /reference path in this app, you will find a static HTML reference page. Your goal is to make the root path display the exact same HTML, by making an Ajax JSON request to /profile and rendering a Handlebars template using the returned data. Use JsRoutes to get the correct path for the request.
(note: this lab is adapted from LinkedIn's "client-side templating throwdown")