Hello!

I've done (well, almost) it on my branch of NodeBB -- abstract out templates engine and add support of Jade in addition to templates.js
Actually now it's posible to add more template engines in a similar fasion.

There are glitches of course but in general everything looks good.

Motivation

In my opinion templates.js is cute but a little too lightweight. And at the same time its syntax is quite verbose and looks like "broken html". But ofcourse I can't just frop it. It do its job good and all currently working code use it.
What I wanted is posibility to use another template engines that won't broke everything.

Architecture overview:

• I've replaced templates.js with general library (nodebb-templatist)
  It delegates temlate compilation, loading and rendering to concrete function choosen by template type
• Concrete library like nodebb-templatist-tpl or nodebb-templatist-jade registers template compiler and loader with general library.
• Template compiler function asyncronously returns dictionary with relative file names and content
• Loader function asynchronously returns "render" function for given template name

Existing problems

• Luck of careful testing
• It would be cool if that concrete template engines be simply a kind of NodeBB plugins. But currently I can't do it because templates compilation runs before plugins are loaded and initialized.
• templates.js can render not only whole template but a specific template block. This ability isnt present in most of other engines. I have a couple of ideas how to implement that but I'm not sure.
• Cross-engine partial includes can be implemented but requires additional hacking on top of template parsing.

That's it!

I can make pull request after some cleanups.
This post is an anounce and invitation to a discussion

I think you should reformulate your question. What is your goal and what that template variables should do?

Here it is!
https://community.nodebb.org/topic/4170/using-jade-with-nodebb-mission-complete

Can't believe I've missed this thread!

It's so... cute!...

ok, PR was fired

@psychobunny my template abstraction layer looks working for me
Unfortunately the project in which I hoped to use NodeBB is wanished.
But I'm still not lost my interest. PR was fired and waiting for review

Maybe I'll make my own theme fully with Jade. Some day...

As for supported template engines - there are modules for t.js templates and for Jade. I can add more engines if anyone needed.

Main unresolved problems are:

• rendering of template block is supported only with t.js For other engines I only pass special variable that indicates what block is requested so it can be considered on template level
• calling helpers is quite complicated in t.js so you have to be carefull when using partials with another engine
• no generic cross-engine imports and partials

I personaly don't think that these problems overweight benefits granted.

@psychobunny my template abstraction layer looks working for me
Unfortunately the project in which I hoped to use NodeBB is wanished.
But I'm still not lost my interest. PR was fired and waiting for review

Maybe I'll make my own theme fully with Jade. Some day...

As for supported template engines - there are modules for t.js templates and for Jade. I can add more engines if anyone needed.

Main unresolved problems are:

• rendering of template block is supported only with t.js For other engines I only pass special variable that indicates what block is requested so it can be considered on template level
• calling helpers is quite complicated in t.js so you have to be carefull when using partials with another engine
• no generic cross-engine imports and partials

I personaly don't think that these problems overweight benefits granted.

Here it is!
https://community.nodebb.org/topic/4170/using-jade-with-nodebb-mission-complete

Can't believe I've missed this thread!

It's so... cute!...

actually this is a duplicate of https://community.nodebb.org/topic/4269/502-proxy-error-on-login/7

A picture is worth a thousand words

http://joxi.ru/Y2LjQ3NIVZkDr6

NodeBB master at 27049a218082a169755f37cb32674aadb4f25ebd
nodebb-theme-lavender@1.0.36

Hello!

Login is broken after commit fa9fde4
Throws an exception:

15/4 15:13 [23541] - error: TypeError: undefined is not a function
    at /home/bogus/projects/downloaded/NodeBB/src/database/redis/main.js:121:4
    at try_callback (/home/bogus/projects/downloaded/NodeBB/node_modules/redis/index.js:573:9)
    at RedisClient.return_reply (/home/bogus/projects/downloaded/NodeBB/node_modules/redis/index.js:661:13)
    at ReplyParser.<anonymous> (/home/bogus/projects/downloaded/NodeBB/node_modules/redis/index.js:309:14)
    at ReplyParser.emit (events.js:95:17)
    at ReplyParser.send_reply (/home/bogus/projects/downloaded/NodeBB/node_modules/redis/lib/parser/javascript.js:300:10)
    at ReplyParser.execute (/home/bogus/projects/downloaded/NodeBB/node_modules/redis/lib/parser/javascript.js:189:22)
    at RedisClient.on_data (/home/bogus/projects/downloaded/NodeBB/node_modules/redis/index.js:534:27)
    at Socket.<anonymous> (/home/bogus/projects/downloaded/NodeBB/node_modules/redis/index.js:91:14)
    at Socket.emit (events.js:95:17)

@baris

It's exactly how it's working! And you still can render it by name like 'categories' without extension.

ok, PR was fired

@julian, well, yes. PR merged into core would be greate, this is what PRs for

I understood that temlates.js can't be replaced that easy and I don't know if it really should be replaced. This is why I'm trying not to break it.
For now no templates need to be updated. Any code that uses templates through ajaxify just continue to work. And only code that use templates.js directly may need small update.

What do you think about?

Well I'm probably too dramatize.
Large part helpers may be normalized that it will get parameters from current block context by name and returns string. That kind of helpers I believe may be registered for any engine.
All other posibilities and differences have to be solved within helper functions code.