Connect views

This is a connect middleware. It serves templates like a static files, supports request paths with omited extensions, has built in support for jade, markdown, less and stylus.

Examples

Serve all templates from ./public

var connect = require('connect')
var Views = require('connect-views')
var app = connect()

app.use(Views({
    root: 'public'
}))

Pass view engine specific options

app.use(Views({
    root: 'public',
    stylus: {
        paths: ['styles']
    },
    markdown: {
        dialect: 'maruku'
    }
}))

Integrate new view engine

Views.engines.haml = function () {
    var haml = require('hamljs')

    return {
        contentType: 'text/html',

        render: function (str, cb) {
            try {
                var out = haml.render(str, this)
            }
            catch (e) {
                return cb(e)
            }
            cb(null, out)
        }
    }
}

Views.engines.extensions['.haml'] = Views.engines.haml

Serve certain file type in a specific way

app.use(Views({
    '.hamlxml': (function () {
        var engine = Views.engines.haml()
        engine.contentType = 'application/xml'
        engine.xml = true
        return engine
    })()
}))

Customization

Several request processing steps are distinguished within module:

1. Translate request's url into a file system path
2. Lookup actual file to render
3. Create view engine instance
4. Render and send file contents

For each step there is an independent public API component doing that job. You can always plug your own implementation for any step by monkey patching or by passing corresponding option to Views():

// Serve only strict paths
app.use(Views({
    pathHandler: function (path, req, res, next) {
        var opts = this

        fs.stat(path, function (error, stat) {
            if (error && error.code == 'ENOENT') return next()
            if (error) return next(error)
            opts.render(path, req, res, next)
        })
    }
}))

View engine

View engine is an object with either render(str, cb) or renderFile(path, cb) method available. Engines which are just plain text processors should use render method, while engines which are able to bound several documents together should use renderFile. Such convention is useful as we can rely on file modification times for conditional gets and caching if there is only render method.

There are also other conventions:

• contentType property

• All options are passed via this

• By default a new engine instance is created for each request ( with Object.create(cachedProto)). So it is safe to pass per request options.

Installation

Via npm:

$ npm install connect-views

To run tests install dev dependencies and launch npm test command:

$ npm install -d
$ npm test

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2012 Eldar Gabdullin eldargab@gmail.com

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.