Steering

Steering is a bridge to the Handlebars.js template precompiler. By precompiling your templates you can speed up page loading in two ways - firstly the final compilation step is much quicker as the template source code does not have to be parsed and the size of the library can be reduced by using the smaller runtime library if all your templates are precompiled.

$ irb

require "steering"
# => true

Steering.compile(File.read("example/mytemplate.handlebars"))
# => "function(Handlebars,...) {...}"

# This will create a file called "mytemplate.js" in the supplied
# example folder and return the size of the resulting file in bytes.
# Make sure to load "index.html" before and after in your favourite browser!
Steering.compile_to_file("example/mytemplate.handlebars", "example/mytemplate.js")
# => 1069

context = Steering.context_for("Hello {{ name }}")
context.call("template", :name => "Andrew")
# => "Hello Andrew"

Steering.render("Hello {{ name }}", :name => "world")
# => "Hello world"

$ gem install steering

This library depends on the steering-source gem which is updated any time a new version of Handlebars.js is released (The steering-source gem's version number is synced with each official Handlebars.js release). This way you can build against different versions of Handlebars.js by requiring the correct version of the steering-source gem.

In addition, you can use this library with unreleased versions of Handlebars.js by setting the HANDLEBARS_SOURCE_PATH and HANDLEBARS_RUNTIME_PATH environment variable:

export HANDLEBARS_SOURCE_PATH=/path/to/handlebars.js
export HANDLEBARS_RUNTIME_PATH=/path/to/handlebars.runtime.js

The ExecJS library is used to automatically choose the best JavaScript engine for your platform. Check out its README for a complete list of supported engines.

The structure and code patterns for this gem were derived from the Ruby Eco gem

You can check out the Steering source code from GitHub:

$ git clone http://github.com/pixeltrix/steering.git

To run Steerings's test suite run rake test.

Report bugs on the GitHub issue tracker.

• Daniel Demmel dain@danieldemmel.me

• Bunped steering-source version to 1.3.0

• The compile_to_file method now takes an options hash which takes the following options:

  :extension - the extension of the file to which the template is compiled :partial - register the template as a partial with Handlebars

  Daniel Demmel

• The render method now takes extra argument which is passed on to context_for. This can be used to pass precompiled partials or helpers to the ExecJS context.

  Daniel Demmel

• Bumped steering-source version to 1.0.rc.1

• Added 'compile_to_file' method. Daniel Demmel
• Added precompile workflow example files. Daniel Demmel

Initial version.

Copyright (c) 2012 Andrew White andyw@pixeltrix.co.uk

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.