ruby-handlebars

Pure Ruby library for Handlebars template system. The main goal of this library is to simplify the use of Ruby and Handlebars on Windows machine. If you do not have any need of working on Windows, take a look at handlebars.rb that uses the real Handlebars library.

Installing

Simply run:

gem install ruby-handlebars

No need for libv8, ruby-racer or any JS related tool.

Using

A very simple case:

require 'ruby-handlebars'

hbs = Handlebars::Handlebars.new
hbs.compile("Hello {{name}}").call({name: 'world'})
# Gives: "Hello world", how original ...

You can also use partials:

hbs.register_partial('full_name', "{{person.first_name}} {{person.last_name}}")
hbs.compile("Hello {{> full_name}}").call({person: {first_name: 'Pinkie', last_name: 'Pie'}})
# Gives: "Hello Pinkie Pie"

Partials support parameters:

hbs.register_partial('full_name', "{{fname}} {{lname}}")
hbs.compile("Hello {{> full_name fname='jon' lname='doe'}}")
# Gives: "Hello jon doe"

You can also register inline helpers:

hbs.register_helper('strip') {|context, value| value.strip}
hbs.compile("Hello {{strip name}}").call({name: '                       world     '})
# Will give (again ....): "Hello world"

or block helpers:

hbs.register_helper('comment') do |context, commenter, block|
  block.fn(context).split("\n").map do |line|
    "#{commenter} #{line}"
  end.join("\n")
end

hbs.compile("{{#comment '//'}}My comment{{/comment}}").call
# Will give: "// My comment"

Note that in any block helper you can use an else block:

hbs.register_helper('markdown') do |context, block, else_block|
  html = md_to_html(block.fn(context))
  html.nil? : else_block.fn(context) : html
end

template = [
  "{{#markdown}}",
  "  {{ description }}",
  "{{else}}",
  "  Description is not valid markdown, no preview available",
  "{{/markdown}}"
].join("\n")

hbs.compile(template).call({description: my_description})
# Output will depend on the validity of the 'my_description' variable

Default helpers:

Three default helpers are provided: each, if and unless.

The each helper let you walk through a list. You can either use the basic notation and referencing the current item as this:

  {{#each items}}
    {{{ this }}}
  {{else}}
    No items
  {{/each}}

or the "as |name|" notation:

  {{#each items as |item| }}
    {{{ item }}}
  {{else}}
    No items
  {{/each}}

The if helper can be used to write conditionnal templates:

  {{#if my_condition}}
    It's ok
  {{else}}
    or maybe not
  {{/if}}

The unless helper works the opposite way to if:

  {{#unless my_condition}}
    It's not ok
  {{else}}
    or maybe it is
  {{/unless}}

Currently, if you call an unknown helper, it will raise an exception. You can override that by registering your own version of the helperMissing helper. Note that only the name of the missing helper will be provided.

For example:

hbs.register_helper('helperMissing') do |context, name|
  puts "No helper found with name #{name}"
end

Limitations and roadmap

This gem does not reuse the real Handlebars code (the JS one) and not everything is handled yet (but it will be someday ;) ):

• the parser is not fully tested yet, it may complain with spaces ...
• parsing errors are, well, not helpful at all

Aknowledgements

This gem would simply not exist if the handlebars team was not here. Thanks a lot for this awesome templating system. Thanks a lot to @cowboyd for the handlebars.rb gem. We used it for a while and it's great (and as told at the beginning of the README, if you do not need any Windows support, use handlebars.rb instead ;) )

Thanks a lot to the contributors @mvz, @schuetzm and @stewartmckee for making it a way better Handlebars renderer :)