Compose

Functional templating for Vala.

using Compose;
using Compose.HTML5;

var app = new Valum.Router ();

app.get ("/users", () => {
  var users = User.all ();
  return res.expand_utf8 (
    html ({},
      head ({},
        title ("My really amazing page"),
        link ("/static/style.css")
      ),
      body ({"lang=en"},
        section ({"class=users"},
          h2 ({}, "Users"),
          take<User> (()     => users.next (),
                      (user) => p (user.username)))
      )
    )
  );
});

Using expressions for evaluating templates presents many advantages:

• it's fast
• it's quite elegant
• lazy evaluation using callbacks with native environments
• it's reusable since nodes can be isolated in functions
• it provides minimal compile-time correctness

Attributes are passed as an null-terminated array of key=value entries, just like environment variables. There is no need to quote or escape what follows the = sign.

script ("/static/script.js", {"type=application/javascript", "defer"});

Also, Compose will automatically escape data where it has to be.

HTML5

Every HTML5 elements can be found within the Compose.HTML5 namespace like shown in the first code example.

To escape values, which is not done by default if HTML is expected, use the e helper.

a (e (post.url), e (post.title));

Note that all attributes are already escaped.

Support for other format will be included if the project happen to become successful.

Utilities

Compose work like a sink, so it will consume data from various sources through a simple callback API. Lazy evaluation at it's finest!

When

Test some condition and render either the first or second callback result.

when (some_condition,
      () => { return p ({}, "Paragraphe"); },
      () => { return div ({}, "Erreur"); });

Take

Consume a callback until it return null, using another callback to perform evaluation.

To help keep track of the current index an array is used, a counter is passed as first argument.

string[] @values = {"Jim", "John"};

take<string> ((i)    => { return i >= @values.length ? null : @values[i]; },
              (name) => { return h2 (name) });