Jade - template engine

Jade is a high performance template engine heavily influenced by Haml and implemented with JavaScript for node.

Features

client-side support
great readability
flexible indentation
block-expansion
mixins
static includes
attribute interpolation
code is escaped by default for security
contextual error reporting at compile & run time
executable for compiling jade templates via the command line
html 5 mode (using the !!! 5 doctype)
optional memory caching
combine dynamic and static tag classes
parse tree manipulation via filters
template inheritance
supports Express JS out of the box
transparent iteration over objects, arrays, and even non-enumerables via each
block comments
no tag prefix
AST filters
filters
- :stylus must have stylus installed
- :sass must have sass.js installed
- :less must have less.js installed
- :markdown must have markdown-js installed or node-discount
- :cdata
- :coffeescript must have coffee-script installed
Vim Syntax
TextMate Bundle
Screencasts
html2jade converter

Implementations

php
scala
ruby

Installation

via npm:

npm install jade

Browser Support

To compile jade to a single file compatible for client-side use simply execute:

$ make jade.js

Alternatively, if uglifyjs is installed via npm (npm install uglify-js) you may execute the following which will create both files. However each release builds these for you.

$ make jade.min.js

By default Jade instruments templates with line number statements such as __.lineno = 3 for debugging purposes. When used in a browser it's useful to minimize this boiler plate, you can do so by passing the option { compileDebug: false }. The following template

p Hello #{name}

Can then be as small as the following generated function:

function anonymous(locals, attrs, escape, rethrow) {
  var buf = [];
  with (locals || {}) {
    var interp;
    buf.push('\n<p>Hello ' + escape((interp = name) == null ? '' : interp) + '\n</p>');
  }
  return buf.join("");
}

Through the use of Jade's ./runtime.js you may utilize these pre-compiled templates on the client-side without Jade itself, all you need is the associated utility functions (in runtime.js), which are then available as jade.attrs, jade.escape etc. To enable this you should pass { client: true } to jade.compile() to tell Jade to reference the helper functions via jade.attrs, jade.escape etc.

function anonymous(locals, attrs, escape, rethrow) {
  var attrs = jade.attrs, escape = jade.escape, rethrow = jade.rethrow;
  var buf = [];
  with (locals || {}) {
    var interp;
    buf.push('\n<p>Hello ' + escape((interp = name) == null ? '' : interp) + '\n</p>');
  }
  return buf.join("");
}

Public API

    var jade = require('jade');

    // Compile a function
    var fn = jade.compile('string of jade', options);
    fn(locals);

Options

self Use a self namespace to hold the locals. false by default
locals Local variable object
filename Used in exceptions, and required when using includes
debug Outputs tokens and function body generated
compiler Compiler to replace jade's default
compileDebug When false no debug instrumentation is compiled

Syntax

Line Endings

CRLF and CR are converted to LF before parsing.

Tag Text

Simply place some content after the tag:

p wahoo!

renders <p>wahoo!</p>.

well cool, but how about large bodies of text:

p
  | foo bar baz
  | rawr rawr
  | super cool
  | go jade go

renders <p>foo bar baz rawr.....</p>

interpolation? yup! both types of text can utilize interpolation, if we passed { name: 'tj', email: 'tj@vision-media.ca' } to the compiled function we can do the following:

#user #{name} &lt;#{email}&gt;

outputs <div id="user">tj <tj@vision-media.ca></div>

Actually want #{} for some reason? escape it!

p \#{something}

now we have <p>#{something}</p>

We can also utilize the unescaped variant !{html}, so the following will result in a literal script tag:

- var html = "<script></script>"
| !{html}

Nested tags that also contain text can optionally use a text block:

label
  | Username:
  input(name='user[name]')

or immediate tag text:

label Username:
  input(name='user[name]')

Tags that accept only text such as script, style, and textarea do not need the leading | character, for example:

  html
    head
      title Example
      script
        if (foo) {
          bar();
        } else {
          baz();
        }

Once again as an alternative, we may use a trailing '.' to indicate a text block, for example:

  p.
    foo asdf
    asdf
     asdfasdfaf
     asdf
    asd.

outputs:

    <p>foo asdf
    asdf
      asdfasdfaf
      asdf
    asd
    .
    </p>

This however differs from a trailing '.' followed by a space, which although is ignored by the Jade parser, tells Jade that this period is a literal:

p .

outputs:

<p>.</p>

It should be noted that text blocks should be doubled escaped. For example if you desire the following output.

</p>foo\bar</p>

use:

p.
  foo\\bar

Comments

Single line comments currently look the same as JavaScript comments, aka "//" and must be placed on their own line:

// just some paragraphs
p foo
p bar

would output

<!-- just some paragraphs -->
<p>foo</p>
<p>bar</p>

Jade also supports unbuffered comments, by simply adding a hyphen:

//- will not output within markup
p foo
p bar

outputting

<p>foo</p>
<p>bar</p>

Block Comments

A block comment is legal as well:

  body
    //
      #content
        h1 Example

outputting

<body>
  <!--
  <div id="content">
    <h1>Example</h1>
  </div>
  -->
</body>

Jade supports conditional-comments as well, for example:

head
  //if lt IE 8
    script(src='/ie-sucks.js')

outputs:

<body>
  <!--[if lt IE 8]>
    <script src="/ie-sucks.js"></script>
  <![endif]-->
</body>

Nesting

Jade supports nesting to define the tags in a natural way:

ul
  li.first
    a(href='#') foo
  li
    a(href='#') bar
  li.last
    a(href='#') baz

Block Expansion

Block expansion allows you to create terse single-line nested tags, the following example is equivalent to the nesting example above.

  ul
    li.first: a(href='#') foo
    li: a(href='#') bar
    li.last: a(href='#') baz

Attributes

Jade currently supports '(' and ')' as attribute delimiters.

a(href='/login', title='View login page') Login

When a value is undefined or null the attribute is not added, so this is fine, it will not compile 'something="null"'.

div(something=null)

Boolean attributes are also supported:

input(type="checkbox", checked)

Boolean attributes with code will only output the attribute when true:

input(type="checkbox", checked=someValue)

Multiple lines work too:

input(type='checkbox',
  name='agreement',
  checked)

Multiple lines without the comma work fine:

input(type='checkbox'
  name='agreement'
  checked)

Funky whitespace? fine:

input(
  type='checkbox'
  name='agreement'
  checked)

Colons work:

rss(xmlns:atom="atom")

Suppose we have the user local { id: 12, name: 'tobi' } and we wish to create an anchor tag with href pointing to "/user/12" we could use regular javascript concatenation:

a(href='/user/' + user.id)= user.name

or we could use jade's interpolation, which I added because everyone using Ruby or CoffeeScript seems to think this is legal js..:

a(href='/user/#{user.id}')= user.name

The class attribute is special-cased when an array is given, allowing you to pass an array such as bodyClasses = ['user', 'authenticated'] directly:

body(class=bodyClasses)

HTML

Inline html is fine, we can use the pipe syntax to write arbitrary text, in this case some html:

html
  body
    | <h1>Title</h1>
    | <p>foo bar baz</p>

Or we can use the trailing . to indicate to Jade that we only want text in this block, allowing us to omit the pipes:

html
  body.
    <h1>Title</h1>
    <p>foo bar baz</p>

Both of these examples yield the same result:

<html><body><h1>Title</h1>
<p>foo bar baz</p>
</body></html>

The same rule applies for anywhere you can have text in jade, raw html is fine:

html
  body
    h1 User <em>#{name}</em>

Doctypes

To add a doctype simply use !!!, or doctype followed by an optional value:

!!!

Will output the transitional doctype, however:

!!! 5

or

!!! html

or

doctype html

doctypes are case-insensitive, so the following are equivalent:

doctype Basic
doctype basic

it's also possible to simply pass a doctype literal:

doctype html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML Basic 1.1//EN

yielding:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML Basic 1.1//EN>

Will output the html 5 doctype. Below are the doctypes defined by default, which can easily be extended:

    var doctypes = exports.doctypes = {
	    '5': '<!DOCTYPE html>',
	    'xml': '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>',
	    'default': '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">',
	    'transitional': '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">',
	    'strict': '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">',
	    'frameset': '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">',
	    '1.1': '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">',
	    'basic': '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML Basic 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-basic/xhtml-basic11.dtd">',
	    'mobile': '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.2//EN" "http://www.openmobilealliance.org/tech/DTD/xhtml-mobile12.dtd">'
	};

To alter the default simply change:

    jade.doctypes.default = 'whatever you want';

Filters

Filters are prefixed with :, for example :markdown and pass the following block of text to an arbitrary function for processing. View the features at the top of this document for available filters.

body
  :markdown
    Woah! jade _and_ markdown, very **cool**
    we can even link to [stuff](http://google.com)

Renders:

   <body><p>Woah! jade <em>and</em> markdown, very <strong>cool</strong> we can even link to <a href="http://google.com">stuff</a></p></body>

Code

Jade currently supports three classifications of executable code. The first is prefixed by -, and is not buffered:

- var foo = 'bar';

This can be used for conditionals, or iteration:

- for (var key in obj)
  p= obj[key]

Due to Jade's buffering techniques the following is valid as well:

- if (foo)
  ul
    li yay
    li foo
    li worked
- else
  p oh no! didnt work

Hell, even verbose iteration:

- if (items.length)
  ul
    - items.forEach(function(item){
      li= item
    - })

Anything you want!

Next up we have escaped buffered code, which is used to buffer a return value, which is prefixed by =:

- var foo = 'bar'
= foo
h1= foo

Which outputs bar<h1>bar</h1>. Code buffered by = is escaped by default for security, however to output unescaped return values you may use !=:

p!= aVarContainingMoreHTML

Jade also has designer-friendly variants, making the literal JavaScript more expressive and declarative. For example the following assignments are equivalent, and the expression is still regular javascript:

 - var foo = 'foo ' + 'bar'
 foo = 'foo ' + 'bar'

Likewise Jade has first-class if, else if, else, until, while, unless among others, however you must remember that the expressions are still regular javascript:

 if foo == 'bar'
   ul
     li yay
     li foo
     li worked
 else
   p oh no! didnt work

Iteration

Along with vanilla JavaScript Jade also supports a subset of constructs that allow you to create more designer-friendly templates, one of these constructs is each, taking the form:

each VAL[, KEY] in OBJ

An example iterating over an array:

- var items = ["one", "two", "three"]
each item in items
  li= item

outputs:

<li>one</li>
<li>two</li>
<li>three</li>

iterating an array with index:

items = ["one", "two", "three"]
each item, i in items
  li #{item}: #{i}

outputs:

<li>one: 0</li>
<li>two: 1</li>
<li>three: 2</li>

iterating an object's keys and values:

obj = { foo: 'bar' }
each val, key in obj
  li #{key}: #{val}

would output <li>foo: bar</li>

Internally Jade converts these statements to regular JavaScript loops such as users.forEach(function(user){, so lexical scope and nesting applies as it would with regular JavaScript:

each user in users
  each role in user.roles
    li= role

You may also use for if you prefer:

for user in users
  for role in user.roles
    li= role

Conditionals

Jade conditionals are equivalent to those using the code (-) prefix, however allow you to ditch parenthesis to become more designer friendly, however keep in mind the expression given is regular JavaScript:

for user in users
  if user.role == 'admin'
    p #{user.name} is an admin
  else
    p= user.name

is equivalent to the following using vanilla JavaScript literals:

 for user in users
   - if (user.role == 'admin')
     p #{user.name} is an admin
   - else
     p= user.name

Jade also provides have unless which is equivalent to if (!(expr)):

 for user in users
   unless user.isAnonymous
     p
       | Click to view
       a(href='/users/' + user.id)= user.name

Template inheritance

Jade supports template inheritance via the block and extends keywords. A block is simply a "block" of Jade that may be replaced within a child template, this process is recursive.

Jade blocks can provide default content if desired, however optional as shown below by block scripts, block content, and block foot.

html
  head
    h1 My Site - #{title}
    block scripts
      script(src='/jquery.js')
  body
    block content
    block foot
      #footer
        p some footer content

Now to extend the layout, simply create a new file and use the extends directive as shown below, giving the path (with or without the .jade extension). You may now define one or more blocks that will override the parent block content, note that here the foot block is not redefined and will output "some footer content".

extends extend-layout

block scripts
  script(src='/jquery.js')
  script(src='/pets.js')

block content
  h1= title
  each pet in pets
    include pet

It's also possible to override a block to provide additional blocks, as shown in the following example where content now exposes a sidebar and primary block for overriding, or the child template could override content all together.

extends regular-layout

block content
  .sidebar
    block sidebar
      p nothing
  .primary
    block primary
      p nothing

Includes

Includes allow you to statically include chunks of Jade, or other content like css, or html which lives in separate files. The classical example is including a header and footer. Suppose we have the following directory structure:

 ./layout.jade
 ./includes/
   ./head.jade
   ./tail.jade

and the following layout.jade:

  html
    include includes/head  
    body
      h1 My Site
      p Welcome to my super amazing site.
      include includes/foot

both includes includes/head and includes/foot are read relative to the filename option given to layout.jade, which should be an absolute path to this file, however Express does this for you. Include then parses these files, and injects the AST produced to render what you would expect:

<html>
  <head>
    <title>My Site</title>
    <script src="/javascripts/jquery.js">
    </script><script src="/javascripts/app.js"></script>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>My Site</h1>
    <p>Welcome to my super lame site.</p>
    <div id="footer">
      <p>Copyright>(c) foobar</p>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

As mentioned include can be used to include other content such as html or css. By providing an extension Jade will not assume that the file is Jade source and will include it as a literal:

html
  body
    include content.html

Include directives may also accept a block, in which case the the given block will be appended to the last block defined in the file. For example if head.jade contains:

head
  script(src='/jquery.js')

We may append values by providing a block to include head as shown below, adding the two scripts.

html
  include head
    script(src='/foo.js')
    script(src='/bar.js')
  body
    h1 test

Mixins

Mixins are converted to regular JavaScript functions in the compiled template that Jade constructs. Mixins may take arguments, though not required:

  mixin list
    ul
      li foo
      li bar
      li baz

Utilizing a mixin without args looks similar, just without a block:

  h2 Groceries
  mixin list

Mixins may take one or more arguments as well, the arguments are regular javascripts expressions, so for example the following:

  mixin pets(pets)
    ul.pets
      - each pet in pets
        li= pet

  mixin profile(user)
    .user
      h2= user.name
      mixin pets(user.pets)

Would yield something similar to the following html:

<div class="user">
  <h2>tj</h2>
  <ul class="pets">
    <li>tobi</li>
    <li>loki</li>
    <li>jane</li>
    <li>manny</li>
  </ul>
</div>

Generated Output

Suppose we have the following Jade:

- var title = 'yay'
h1.title #{title}
p Just an example

When the compileDebug option is not explicitly false, Jade will compile the function instrumented with __.lineno = n;, which in the event of an exception is passed to rethrow() which constructs a useful message relative to the initial Jade input.

function anonymous(locals) {
  var __ = { lineno: 1, input: "- var title = 'yay'\nh1.title #{title}\np Just an example", filename: "testing/test.js" };
  var rethrow = jade.rethrow;
  try {
    var attrs = jade.attrs, escape = jade.escape;
    var buf = [];
    with (locals || {}) {
      var interp;
      __.lineno = 1;
       var title = 'yay'
      __.lineno = 2;
      buf.push('<h1');
      buf.push(attrs({ "class": ('title') }));
      buf.push('>');
      buf.push('' + escape((interp = title) == null ? '' : interp) + '');
      buf.push('</h1>');
      __.lineno = 3;
      buf.push('<p>');
      buf.push('Just an example');
      buf.push('</p>');
    }
    return buf.join("");
  } catch (err) {
    rethrow(err, __.input, __.filename, __.lineno);
  }
}

When the compileDebug option is explicitly false, this instrumentation is stripped, which is very helpful for light-weight client-side templates. Combining Jade's options with the ./runtime.js file in this repo allows you to toString() compiled templates and avoid running the entire Jade library on the client, increasing performance, and decreasing the amount of JavaScript required.

function anonymous(locals) {
  var attrs = jade.attrs, escape = jade.escape;
  var buf = [];
  with (locals || {}) {
    var interp;
    var title = 'yay'
    buf.push('<h1');
    buf.push(attrs({ "class": ('title') }));
    buf.push('>');
    buf.push('' + escape((interp = title) == null ? '' : interp) + '');
    buf.push('</h1>');
    buf.push('<p>');
    buf.push('Just an example');
    buf.push('</p>');
  }
  return buf.join("");
}

Example Makefile

Below is an example Makefile used to compile pages/*.jade into pages/*.html files by simply executing make.

JADE = $(shell find pages/*.jade)
HTML = $(JADE:.jade=.html)

all: $(HTML)
	
%.html: %.jade
	jade < $< --path $< > $@

clean:
	rm -f $(HTML)

.PHONY: clean

this can be combined with the watch(1) command to produce a watcher-like behaviour:

 $ watch make

jade(1)


Usage: jade [options] [dir|file ...]

Options:

  -h, --help         output usage information
  -v, --version      output the version number
  -o, --obj <str>    javascript options object
  -O, --out <dir>    output the compiled html to <dir>
  -p, --path <path>  filename used to resolve includes over stdio

Examples:

  # translate jade the templates dir
  $ jade templates

  # create {foo,bar}.html
  $ jade {foo,bar}.jade

  # jade over stdio
  $ jade < my.jade > my.html

  # jade over stdio specifying filename to resolve include directives
  $ jade < my.jade -p my.jade > my.html

  # jade over stdio
  $ echo "h1 Jade!" | jade

  # foo, bar dirs rendering to /tmp
  $ jade foo bar --out /tmp

License

(The MIT License)

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.

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Readme.md

Readme.md

Jade - template engine

Features

Implementations

Installation

Browser Support

Public API

Options

Syntax

Line Endings

Tags

Tag Text

Comments

Block Comments

Nesting

Block Expansion

Attributes

HTML

Doctypes

Filters

Code

Iteration

Conditionals

Template inheritance

Includes

Mixins

Generated Output

Example Makefile

jade(1)

License

Files

Readme.md

Latest commit

History

Readme.md

File metadata and controls

Jade - template engine

Features

Implementations

Installation

Browser Support

Public API

Options

Syntax

Line Endings

Tags

Tag Text

Comments

Block Comments

Nesting

Block Expansion

Attributes

HTML

Doctypes

Filters

Code

Iteration

Conditionals

Template inheritance

Includes

Mixins

Generated Output

Example Makefile

jade(1)

License