handlebars-rust
===============
([Photo ref](https://www.flickr.com/photos/jg33/4721045137))
Rust templating with Handlebars.
[](https://travis-ci.org/sunng87/handlebars-rust)
[](https://crates.io/crates/handlebars)
[](https://crates.io/crates/handlebars)
[](./LICENSE)
Thanks to [@blaenk](https://github.com/blaenk)'s patch,
handlebars-rust now compiles on nightly, beta and stable (1.4.0+) channel.
## Documents
[Rust doc](http://sunng87.github.io/handlebars-rust/handlebars/index.html).
## Usage
Check examples in the source. The example shows you how to:
* Create a `Handlebars` and register the template from files
* Create a custom Helper with closure or struct implementing `HelperDef`, and register it
* Render something
Run `cargo run --example render` to see results.
(or `RUST_LOG=handlebars=info cargo run --example render` for logging output).
Checkout `examples/` for more concrete demos of current API.
From 0.13, you can use either `rustc_serialize` or `serde` for your
data type. By default we use `ToJson` from `rustc_serialize` to
convert your data into handlebars internal types. If you use `serde`
framework in your project, you can enable `serde_type` feature of this
crate and we will use `Serialize` from `serde` to convert.
## Why Handlebars?
For information about handlebars, you will go to [handlebars.js](http://handlebarsjs.com).
It's my favorite templating tool by far. I used it in
[Delicious.com](https://delicious.com) as javascript-side template in
2013. Also I maintained a Clojure wrapper for Handlebars.java,
[hbs](http://github.com/sunng87/hbs). And you may notice the
close relationship between Ember.js and Rust community, handlebars is
the default templating language of Ember.js framework, which powers
[crates.io](http://crates.io).
Reasons I prefer Handlebars:
* Never ruin your Rust with HTML
* Never ruin your HTML with Rust
* Templating without a reuse mechanism is shit
* Templating without customization is nothing but shit
Handlebars provides:
* Separation of Rust and HTML
* A few control structures makes templating easier
* Few control structures stops you to put logic into templates
* Template reuse with include(`>`), `partial` and `block`
* Customize template behavior with **helper**s
Limitations:
* As a static typed language, it's a little verbose to use handlebars
* You will have to make your data `ToJson`-able, so we can render
it. If you are on nightly channel, we have [a syntax extension](https://github.com/sunng87/tojson_macros) to generate default `ToJson` implementation for you. If you use [serde](https://github.com/serde-rs/serde), you can enable `serde_type` feature of handlebars-rust and add `#[Serialize]` for your types.
## Handlebars-js features supported in Handlebars-rust
* Expression / Block Helpers
* Built-in helpers
* Customizing helper
* Parameter and hashes for helper
* Partials, include
* Omitting whitespace with `~`
* Subexpression `{{(foo bar)}}`
* Json expression `a.b.[0]` and `a.b.[c]`
Feel free to report an issue if you find something broken. We aren't
going to implement all features of handlebars-js, but we should have a
workaround for cases we don't support.
## Handlebars for Iron
I have started another project
[handlebars-iron](https://github.com/sunng87/handlebars-iron) for
the Iron web framework.
## Break Change Log
No doubt that we will try our best to keep API compatible in each
release. But sometime we have to bring in break changes to improve the
design when worthy.
* 0.10.0: `renderw` now accepts `&Context` instead of `ToJson` to avoid
unnecessary clone in batch rendering. [90274e7](https://github.com/sunng87/handlebars-rust/commit/90274e75feeffa1d509abde62a8c70ac2c0a4e76)
## License
MIT, of course.
## Contact
[Ning Sun](https://github.com/sunng87) (sunng@about.me)