Teach you how to simply write a page template engine using javascript_javascript skills

So I thought about whether I could write some simple code to improve this template engine and work together with other existing logic. AbsurdJS itself is mainly released as a module for NodeJS, but it also releases a client version. With this in mind, I can't directly use existing engines because most of them run on NodeJS and cannot run on the browser. What I need is something small, written purely in Javascript, that can run directly in the browser. When I stumbled upon this blog by John Resig one day, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was exactly what I was looking for! I made some slight modifications, and the number of lines of code is about 20. The logic is very interesting. In this article, I will reproduce the process of writing this engine step by step. If you can read along, you will understand how sharp John's idea is!

My initial thoughts were as follows:

var TemplateEngine = function(tpl, data) {
  // magic here ...
}
var template = '<p>Hello, my name is <%name%>. I\'m <%age%> years old.</p>';
console.log(TemplateEngine(template, {
  name: "Krasimir",
  age: 29
}));

A simple function, the input is our template and data object, the output is probably easy for you to think of, like the following:

Hello, my name is Krasimir. I'm 29 years old.

var re = /<%([^%>]+)&#63;%>/g;

This regular expression will capture all fragments starting with <% and ending with %>. The parameter g (global) at the end means that not only one is matched, but all matching fragments are matched. There are many ways to use regular expressions in Javascript. What we need is to output an array containing all strings based on the regular expression. This is exactly what exec does.

var re = /<%([^%>]+)&#63;%>/g;
var match = re.exec(tpl);

If we use console.log to print out the variable match, we will see:

[
  "<%name%>",
  " name ", 
  index: 21,
  input: 
  "<p>Hello, my name is <%name%>. I\'m <%age%> years old.</p>"
]

But we can see that the returned array only contains the first match. We need to wrap the above logic with a while loop so that we can get all matches.

var re = /<%([^%>]+)&#63;%>/g;
while(match = re.exec(tpl)) {
  console.log(match);
}

If you run the above code, you will see that both <%name%> and <%age%> are printed.

Now comes the interesting part. After identifying the matches in the template, we need to replace them with the actual data passed to the function. The simplest way is to use the replace function. We can write it like this:

var TemplateEngine = function(tpl, data) {
  var re = /<%([^%>]+)&#63;%>/g;
  while(match = re.exec(tpl)) {
    tpl = tpl.replace(match[0], data[match[1]])
  }
  return tpl;
}

Okay, so I can run, but it’s not good enough. Here we use a simple object to pass data in the form of data["property"], but in actual situations we are likely to need more complex nested objects. So we modified the data object slightly:

{
  name: "Krasimir Tsonev",
  profile: { age: 29 }
}

However, if you write it directly like this, it will not run, because if you use <%profile.age%> in the template, the code will be replaced by data['profile.age'], and the result will be undefined. In this way we cannot simply use the replace function, but must use other methods. It would be best if you could use Javascript code directly between <% and %>, so that the incoming data can be evaluated directly, like this:

You may be curious, how is this achieved? Here John uses the new Function syntax to create a function based on a string. Let’s take a look at an example:

var fn = new Function("arg", "console.log(arg + 1);");
fn(2); // outputs 3

　fn is a genuine function. It accepts one parameter, and the function body is console.log(arg 1);. The above code is equivalent to the following code:

var fn = function(arg) {
  console.log(arg + 1);
}
fn(2); // outputs 3

With this method, we can construct a function from a string, including its parameters and function body. Isn’t this exactly what we want! But don't worry, before constructing the function, let's take a look at what the function body looks like. According to the previous idea, the final return of this template engine should be a compiled template. Still using the previous template string as an example, the returned content should be similar to:

return
"<p>Hello, my name is " + 
this.name + 
". I\'m " + 
this.profile.age + 
" years old.</p>";

Of course, in the actual template engine, we will divide the template into small pieces of text and meaningful Javascript code. Earlier you may have seen me using simple string concatenation to achieve the desired effect, but this is not 100% in line with our requirements. Since the user is likely to pass more complex Javascript code, we need another loop here, as follows:

var template = 
'My skills:' + 
'<%for(var index in this.skills) {%>' + 
'<a href=""><%this.skills[index]%></a>' +
'<%}%>';

　　如果使用字符串拼接的话，代码就应该是下面的样子：

return
'My skills:' + 
for(var index in this.skills) { +
'<a href="">' + 
this.skills[index] +
'</a>' +
}

　　当然，这个代码不能直接跑，跑了会出错。于是我用了John的文章里写的逻辑，把所有的字符串放在一个数组里，在程序的最后把它们拼接起来。

var r = [];
r.push('My skills:'); 
for(var index in this.skills) {
r.push('<a href="">');
r.push(this.skills[index]);
r.push('</a>');
}
return r.join('');

　　下一步就是收集模板里面不同的代码行，用于生成函数。通过前面介绍的方法，我们可以知道模板中有哪些占位符（译者注：或者说正则表达式的匹配项）以及它们的位置。所以，依靠一个辅助变量（cursor，游标），我们就能得到想要的结果。

var TemplateEngine = function(tpl, data) {
  var re = /<%([^%>]+)&#63;%>/g,
    code = 'var r=[];\n',
    cursor = 0;
  var add = function(line) {
    code += 'r.push("' + line.replace(/"/g, '\\"') + '");\n';
  }
  while(match = re.exec(tpl)) {
    add(tpl.slice(cursor, match.index));
    add(match[1]);
    cursor = match.index + match[0].length;
  }
  add(tpl.substr(cursor, tpl.length - cursor));
  code += 'return r.join("");'; // <-- return the result
  console.log(code);
  return tpl;
}
var template = '<p>Hello, my name is <%this.name%>. I\'m <%this.profile.age%> years old.</p>';
console.log(TemplateEngine(template, {
  name: "Krasimir Tsonev",
  profile: { age: 29 }
}));

　　上述代码中的变量code保存了函数体。开头的部分定义了一个数组。游标cursor告诉我们当前解析到了模板中的哪个位置。我们需要依靠它来遍历整个模板字符串。此外还有个函数add，它负责把解析出来的代码行添加到变量code中去。有一个地方需要特别注意，那就是需要把code包含的双引号字符进行转义（escape）。否则生成的函数代码会出错。如果我们运行上面的代码，我们会在控制台里面看见如下的内容：

var r=[];
r.push("<p>Hello, my name is ");
r.push("this.name");
r.push(". I'm ");
r.push("this.profile.age");
return r.join("");

　　等等，貌似不太对啊，this.name和this.profile.age不应该有引号啊，再来改改。

var add = function(line, js) {
  js? code += 'r.push(' + line + ');\n' :
    code += 'r.push("' + line.replace(/"/g, '\\"') + '");\n';
}
while(match = re.exec(tpl)) {
  add(tpl.slice(cursor, match.index));
  add(match[1], true); // <-- say that this is actually valid js
  cursor = match.index + match[0].length;
}

　　占位符的内容和一个布尔值一起作为参数传给add函数，用作区分。这样就能生成我们想要的函数体了。

var r=[];
r.push("<p>Hello, my name is ");
r.push(this.name);
r.push(". I'm ");
r.push(this.profile.age);
return r.join("");

　　剩下来要做的就是创建函数并且执行它。因此，在模板引擎的最后，把原本返回模板字符串的语句替换成如下的内容：

　　我们甚至不需要显式地传参数给这个函数。我们使用apply方法来调用它。它会自动设定函数执行的上下文。这就是为什么我们能在函数里面使用this.name。这里this指向data对象。

　　模板引擎接近完成了，不过还有一点，我们需要支持更多复杂的语句，比如条件判断和循环。我们接着上面的例子继续写。

var template = 
'My skills:' + 
'<%for(var index in this.skills) {%>' + 
'<a href="#"><%this.skills[index]%></a>' +
'<%}%>';
console.log(TemplateEngine(template, {
  skills: ["js", "html", "css"]
}));

　　这里会产生一个异常，Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token for。如果我们调试一下，把code变量打印出来，我们就能发现问题所在。

var r=[];
r.push("My skills:");
r.push(for(var index in this.skills) {);
r.push("<a href=\"\">");
r.push(this.skills[index]);
r.push("</a>");
r.push(});
r.push("");
return r.join("");

　　带有for循环的那一行不应该被直接放到数组里面，而是应该作为脚本的一部分直接运行。所以我们在把内容添加到code变量之前还要多做一个判断。

var re = /<%([^%>]+)&#63;%>/g,
  reExp = /(^( )&#63;(if|for|else|switch|case|break|{|}))(.*)&#63;/g,
  code = 'var r=[];\n',
  cursor = 0;
var add = function(line, js) {
  js&#63; code += line.match(reExp) &#63; line + '\n' : 'r.push(' + line + ');\n' :
    code += 'r.push("' + line.replace(/"/g, '\\"') + '");\n';
}

　　这里我们新增加了一个正则表达式。它会判断代码中是否包含if、for、else等等关键字。如果有的话就直接添加到脚本代码中去，否则就添加到数组中去。运行结果如下：

var r=[];
r.push("My skills:");
for(var index in this.skills) {
r.push("<a href=\"#\">");
r.push(this.skills[index]);
r.push("</a>");
}
r.push("");
return r.join("");

　　当然，编译出来的结果也是对的。

　　最后一个改进可以使我们的模板引擎更为强大。我们可以直接在模板中使用复杂逻辑，例如：

var template = 
'My skills:' + 
'<%if(this.showSkills) {%>' +
  '<%for(var index in this.skills) {%>' + 
  '<a href="#"><%this.skills[index]%></a>' +
  '<%}%>' +
'<%} else {%>' +
  '<p>none</p>' +
'<%}%>';
console.log(TemplateEngine(template, {
  skills: ["js", "html", "css"],
  showSkills: true
}));

　　除了上面说的改进，我还对代码本身做了些优化，最终版本如下：

var TemplateEngine = function(html, options) {
  var re = /<%([^%>]+)&#63;%>/g, reExp = /(^( )&#63;(if|for|else|switch|case|break|{|}))(.*)&#63;/g, code = 'var r=[];\n', cursor = 0;
  var add = function(line, js) {
    js&#63; (code += line.match(reExp) &#63; line + '\n' : 'r.push(' + line + ');\n') :
      (code += line != '' &#63; 'r.push("' + line.replace(/"/g, '\\"') + '");\n' : '');
    return add;
  }
  while(match = re.exec(html)) {
    add(html.slice(cursor, match.index))(match[1], true);
    cursor = match.index + match[0].length;
  }
  add(html.substr(cursor, html.length - cursor));
  code += 'return r.join("");';
  return new Function(code.replace(/[\r\t\n]/g, '')).apply(options);
}

　　代码比我预想的还要少，只有区区15行！