Lo-Dash AMD Template Loader

Created by Tim Branyen @tbranyen

RequireJS, Dojo, and Curl are excellent module loaders, but through the flexibility of plugin architecture they should really be seen as resource loaders.

We've come to expect our development environments to be raw and our builds to be as optimized as possible. This plugin will fetch your Lo-Dash templates during development and inline them in a production build.

Unlike requirejs-tpl it does not use a hardcoded template function, but instead uses the exact one from your copy of Lo-Dash. Consistency is a key difference here.

Almost every single article and tutorial on using client side templates with AMD, will advocate the use of the RequireJS text! plugin. While this is a fine tool for loading text, it is not optimized for templates. It requires the duplicative act of compiling the templates before use in production.

Installing:

Bower:

bower install lodash-template-loader

NPM:

npm install lodash-template-loader

Alternatively you can download the loader.js file and place anywhere in your project.

Loading the plugin:

require.config({
  paths: {
    // You can change the plugin name to be whatever you want, maybe tpl?
    "ldsh": "path/to/lodash-template-loader/loader"
  }
});

You must not end the path in .js unless you are providing a url.

Examples:

• vendor/libraries/loader
• http://cdn.mysite.com/vendor/libraries/loader.js

Using:

Inside an AMD module you can now load templates like so:

// Omit the extension and root path.
define(["ldsh!path/to/template"], function(template) {
  var contents = template({
    // Some data.
  });
});

The path to your templates directory can be configured as well as the default extension to search for. More details below.

Configuring templateSettings:

There are a few default settings in place to make consumption easier.

The extension appended by default is .html. The default root path is your configuration's baseUrl. No templateSettings are configured by default.

To change these options, add the following to your configuration:

require.config({
  // The Lo-Dash loader configuration.
  lodashLoader: {
    // This is the default extension, you can change to whatever you like.
    // Setting this to "" will disable automatic extensions.
    ext: ".html",

    // The path to where your templates live relative to the `baseUrl`.
    root: "/",

    // Globally configured template settings to be applied to any templates
    // loaded.  This correlates directly to `_.templateSettings`.
    templateSettings: {}
  }
});

What about Underscore?

I've decided to go with the compatible .source attribute for obtaining the template function source string, which makes this plugin work with Underscore as well. You'll have to manually map the resource identifier which is explained in detail below.

Mapping Underscore to Lo-Dash:

In order to use Underscore with this plugin, you must map the identifier. Internally the plugin specifically looks for the identifier lodash. In the configuration simply:

require.config({
  // Define a new object literal, named map.
  map: {
    // Ensure the mapping works globally across any modules using this plugin.
    "*": {
      // Map the lodash identifier to whatever module you want here.
      "lodash": "underscore"
    }
  }
});

Using with Dojo:

Ensure Dojo's loader is in async mode:

<script data-dojo-config="async:1" src="dojo/dojo.js"></script>

Set up your configuration:

require({
  paths: {
    "ldsh": "path/to/loader"
  }
});

And Require in your template:

require(["ldsh!path/to/template"], function(template) {
  var contents = template({
    // Some data.
  });
});

Using with Curl:

Set up your configuration:

curl.config({
  paths: {
    "ldsh": "path/to/loader"
  }
});

And Curl in your template:

curl(["ldsh!path/to/template"], function(template) {
  var contents = template({
    // Some data.
  });
});

Running tests

You will need Node.js and Grunt installed to run tests.

Clone this project, open the directory in a terminal, and execute the following commands:

# Install dependencies.
npm install

# Run the tests.
grunt

You can also run an http-server in the root and hit the tests directly. Since XHR is used, tests must be run from a server.

Release notes:

2.0.0

• Lodash v4 support

1.0.1

• Fixes Dojo support and unit tests

1.0.0

• Reintroduced: SourceURL automatically attached
• Locked lodash to ~3 to avoid backwards breaking API

0.1.9

• Revert breaking change in _.template to reduce confusion

0.1.8

• Old IE support
• SourceURL automatically attached

0.1.7

• Removes Bower from install process in NPM.
• Makes Lo-Dash available in the render context.

0.1.6

• Ensure root option works as expected.

0.1.5

• Tests are now accurate.
• Fixed relative loading and conformance between Dojo, Curl, and RequireJS.

0.1.4

• Less restrictive handling of Lo-Dash version within Bower dependencies.
• Fixes edge case where an undefined baseUrl root would get a leading slash.

0.1.3

• Added RequireJS optimizer testing.
• Fixed bug with absolute URL fetching (double /).

0.1.2

• Resolved issue with baseUrl concatenation to moduleName.

0.1.1

• Hotfix for building in r.js projects.

0.1.0

• Open sourced on GitHub.