Support Node.js Express?

[aseemk]

Hey there,

Great work on this stuff! Just one request: is it possible to use this as a template engine in Express?

I'm not sure exactly what that entails, but I don't think it's much; I'm pretty sure it's just a matter of exposing the expected APIs. I can ask the Express author(s) for details on this if you would like.

Here's the sample app I made to test this: https://gist.github.com/927144 (Check out the comments to see the error message.)

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,
Aseem

[mapmarkus]

I use eco in express (v 2.3.3) registering .html like this

app.set 'view engine', 'html'
app.register '.html', 
   compile: (str, options) ->
      return (locals) ->
         eco.render str, locals

[aseemk]

Thanks @yizzreel -- that works like a charm! I'll keep this issue open; it would still be great for Eco to support Express out-of-the-box.

[mapmarkus]

If you take a quick look at https://github.com/sstephenson/eco/blob/master/src/eco/compiler.coffee#L6, you'll see that the problem registering eco as a processor in expresso is the call to the method compile, which in eco returns a string to be interpreted by the class Function() (that takes the list of arguments and the function body string in the constructor), while express expects it to return a callback, so it tries to use that returned string as a the expected callback, hence the error you're getting in your gist page.

I think express recently changed the default method for view rendering from render to compile, so this error might be new, since express and eco are being used together in https://github.com/sstephenson/stitch (not sure which versions though, I'm still kinda new in all this coffeescript awesomeness).

[aseemk]

Thanks for looking into it! I'm not knowledgeable enough to understand then what the right course of action is w.r.t. backwards compatibility, etc., but one quick comment:

since express and eco are being used together in https://github.com/sstephenson/stitch

Hmm, are you sure? I see the sample code mentions Stitch is to be used with Express, but I don't see any reference to Eco anywhere. The source also isn't an Express app.

[mapmarkus]

See https://github.com/sstephenson/stitch/blob/master/src/stitch.coffee#L20. And, it's true, express is not part of stitch, but they work together nicely.

[aseemk]

Apologies if I'm still being dense, but it still doesn't seem to use Express's view system for compiling Eco -- which is what my issue is about. Instead, Stitch seems to compile Eco directly.

Cool addition in your fork. =) Plan on submitting it as a pull request? Btw, maybe it would be better named express to make it clear this is the property to use with Express?

[mapmarkus]

The pull is already submitted :) #19 (it's also in this comment thread, above your last comment). I used the less intrusive name I could think of, to make the smallest change possible.

[sstephenson]

Fixed in 5d62cdd.

express = require "express"
eco = require "eco"

app = express.createServer()
app.register ".eco", eco

[aseemk]

Awesome! Could you bump the version number and npm publish this? Thanks!