This file configures a Grunt task called "jst".
It precompiles HTML templates using Underscore/Lodash notation into functions, creating a .jst file. This can be brought into your HTML via a <script> tag in order to expose your templates as window.JST for use in your client-side JavaScript.
In other words, this takes HTML files in assets/templates/ and turns them into tiny little JavaScript functions that return HTML strings when you pass a data dictionary into them. This approach is called "precompiling", and it can considerably speed up template rendering on the client, and even reduce bandwidth usage and related expenses.)
Note that, by default, Underscore/Lodash/JST notation is opposite from EJS (
<%=is<%-, and vice versa). If this bothers you, it can be easily configured in this file. (See inline comments for details.)
No problem!
If you aren't using any kind of precompiled client-side templates, then just ignore this file.
If you are using a front-end framework like Vue.js, Ember, React, or Angular, see the starter app for examples, or come by https://sailsjs.com/support for assistance.
If you want to use a completely different pre-processor like Handlebars or Dust, and you want Sails to process your client-side templates automatically as you work, then you're in luck. In most cases, this is as easy as installing the appropriate Grunt plugin as a dependency of your Sails app, and then configuring it to output the precompiled templates (condensed into a single JavaScript file) to the same path as in this default task.
Here are a couple of popular examples:
For additional usage documentation, see grunt-contrib-jst.