jQuery-tmpl.NET

A simple .NET library for rendering jQuery templates server-side.

Version History

• v0.6: Bugfix in boolean literal interpretation, ! operator support, and support for defining and calling server-side equivalents for native javascript functions.

• v0.5: Added MIT license, use MvcHtmlString, lower-case boolean strings

• v0.4.1: Bugfix in expression evaluation

• v0.4: Support for >, >=, <, <= operators in expressions, bugfix in each parsing.

• v0.3: Support == and != operators in expressions, bugfix in if/else parsing.

• v0.2: Arbitrary function evaluation, nested templates with {{tmpl}}, and custom tag parameters for {{each}}

• v0.1: Basic functionality in place

Usage

The API is written to be a simple as possible. Given an html fragment with embedded jQuery templates tmpl and a .NET object data:

new TemplateEngine().Render(tmpl, data);

This renders the template in (hopefully) much the same way that jquery-tmpl would do on the client side.

Additional support is provided for ASP.NET MVC with the jQueryTmpl.Mvc library. This contains an HtmlHelper extension method that can be used directly on views to render partial views containing jQuery templates:

<%= Html.RenderTemplate("PartialViewName", model) %>

Supported Tags

• ${expression}: Both the shorthand and {{= }} are supported. Will print out the value of the indicated property on the provided data object. Nested property resolution is supported, thanks to shellscape! Note that expression/function evaluation is not supported.

• {{= expression}}: Handled identically to ${}.

• {{each expression}}...{{/each}}: Renders an instance of the tag contents for each item in the property value on the provided data object. The property must be an array of objects, and custom index or value variables are supported via the {{each(index,value) data}} syntax.

• {{if expression}}...{{/if}: Renders the content of the tag if the property value on the provided data object evaluates to true. This is javascript-style evaluation so 0, null, empty string are all false.

• {{else expression}}: Used within the {{if}} tag to evaluate else conditions. The property value is optional.

• {{html expression}}: Renders the value of the property without HTML encoding. Otherwise identical to ${}.

• {{tmpl "#templateName"}}: Used for template composition. A named template is evaluated with the current data item within the parent template. The named template must first be registered with the TemplateEngine class before it can be used.

Expressions

Each template tag supports expression evaluation for parameters labeled above as expression. Currently, the following rules apply to expression evaluation:

• If the expression string equals the name of a property or field on the data object or the options object passed in to the rendering engine, the value of the property or field is used.

• If the expression has brackets [], the value inside the brackets is interpreted as array index values. Multiple index values can be provided, e.g. myArray[0,1,2] for multidimensional arrays. They can also repeated for jagged arrays, e.g. myArray[0][1][2].

• If the expression has parentheses (), and the expression matches a method, or even a delegate type such as Action<> or Func<>, declared on the data object or the options object, the values inside are interpreted as method parameters. For example, myFunc(1, 2) or myData.ToString(). These are case-insensitive lookups.

• If no matching property or field is found, the value is interpreted as a literal string or number value.

• Equality and comparison operators are supported, e.g. x > 123, x == "123", or even x.property.method(y <= z.value).

Roadmap

• Better APIs for nested template evaluation.

• Pluggable template cache.

• {{wrap}} implementation.

• Whatever garann asks me for