PEJS

PEJS is pre-compiled EJS with a inheritance, blocks and file support that works both in the client and on the server. It's available through npm:

npm install pejs

Usage

PEJS is easy to use:

var pejs = require('pejs');
var views = pejs(); // pass in {compress:true} to get compressed output

// The parameters for the EJS template ("example.ejs") are in the second argument
// the "./" in the path represents the base directory (and not necessarily the current directory)
views.render('./example.ejs', {parameter: 'value'}, function(err, result) {
	// renders example.ejs into a string
	console.log(result);
});
views.parse('./example.ejs', function(err, src) {
	// parses the template and compiles it down to portable js
	// this means it works in the client!
	console.log(src);
});

PEJS has an internal cache of parsed templates which means that when you render a template twice it will only parse it once.

It also makes sure to clear this cache if the template has changed in anyway on the disk

Options

The pejs() init function supports the following options:

compress: Compress the template output. Default: false
basedir: Base directory for template resolution. Default: cwd
watch: Watch templates for changes. Default: true

Path resolution

PEJS uses a similar file/module resolution as node.js.

views.render('./file'): pejs will look for file.pejs, file.ejs, file.html, file/index.pejs, file/index.ejs or file/index.html.
views.render('template'): pejs will look for for template in in the nearest views folder using the same scheme as above.

This is almost exactly the same as node does with it's node_modules resolution.

Classic EJS

PEJS templates has your usual EJS syntax with <% and %>. Read more about EJS here

inline code: <% var a = 42; %>
insert: <%- data %>
insert and html escape: <%= data %>

Blocks

PEJS expands the original EJS syntax by letting you declare blocks using the <%{ syntax. A block is basically a partial template that optionally can be loaded from a file.

declare block: <%{{ blockName }}%>
declare file block: <%{ './filename.html' }%>
override block: <%{ blockName %>hello block<%} %>

In general all block can be loaded from a file instead of being defined inline by providing a filename:

declare block: <%{{ myBlock './example.ejs' }}%>
override block: <%{ myOverrideBlock 'example.ejs' }%>

If you want include a block using a different set of locals than in you current scope you pass these as the last argument to the block.

declare block: <%{{ myBlock {newLocalsArg:oldLocalsArg} }}%>
override block: <%{ './example.ejs' {newLocalsHere:oldLocalsArg} }%>

All filepaths above are subject to the same path resolution as decribed in the previous section.

Inheritance

Using blocks it's easy to implement template inheritance. Just declare a base.html with some anchored blocks:

<body>
	Hello i am base
	<%{{ content }}%>
</body>

Then a child.html that renders base.html

<%{ './base.html' }%>
<%{ content %>
	i am inserted in base
<%} %>

To render the example just render child.html

pejs.render('./child.html', function(err, result) {
	console.log(result);
});

The above outputs:

<body>
	Hello i am base
	i am inserted in base
</body>

License

MIT

th-ch/pejs