What is jade?
Jade, now known as Pug, is a high-performance template engine heavily influenced by Haml and implemented with JavaScript for Node.js and browsers. It is used to generate HTML dynamically and is known for its clean and minimal syntax.
What are jade's main functionalities?
Template Rendering
Jade allows you to render HTML templates with dynamic data. In this example, a simple template is rendered with a variable 'name' which is replaced with 'World'.
const pug = require('pug');
const html = pug.render('p Hello, #{name}!', { name: 'World' });
console.log(html);
Template Inheritance
Jade supports template inheritance, allowing you to create a base template and extend it in other templates. This example demonstrates how 'index.pug' extends 'layout.pug' and defines a content block.
const pug = require('pug');
const html = pug.renderFile('index.pug');
console.log(html);
// index.pug
// extends layout.pug
// block content
// h1= title
// p Welcome to #{title}
// layout.pug
// doctype html
// html
// head
// title= title
// body
// block content
Mixins
Mixins in Jade allow you to create reusable blocks of code. This example shows a mixin 'list' that generates an unordered list from an array of items.
const pug = require('pug');
const html = pug.renderFile('mixin.pug');
console.log(html);
// mixin.pug
// mixin list(items)
// ul
// each item in items
// li= item
// +list(['Apple', 'Banana', 'Cherry'])
Other packages similar to jade
ejs
EJS (Embedded JavaScript) is a simple templating language that lets you generate HTML markup with plain JavaScript. It is similar to Jade but uses a more traditional syntax that is closer to HTML, making it easier for those familiar with HTML to use.
handlebars
Handlebars is a popular templating engine that provides the power necessary to let you build semantic templates effectively with no frustration. It is known for its simplicity and logic-less templates, which makes it different from Jade's more feature-rich approach.
mustache
Mustache is a logic-less template syntax. It is named 'logic-less' because it lacks any explicit control flow statements like if and else. This makes it very different from Jade, which supports more complex logic and features.
Full documentation is at jade-lang.com
Jade is a high performance template engine heavily influenced by Haml
and implemented with JavaScript for node. For discussion join the Google Group.
You can test drive Jade online here.
Installation
via npm:
$ npm install jade
Syntax
Jade is a clean, whitespace sensitive syntax for writing html. Here is a simple example:
doctype html
html(lang="en")
head
title= pageTitle
script(type='text/javascript').
if (foo) bar(1 + 5)
body
h1 Jade - node template engine
#container.col
if youAreUsingJade
p You are amazing
else
p Get on it!
p.
Jade is a terse and simple templating language with a
strong focus on performance and powerful features.
becomes
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<title>Jade</title>
<script type="text/javascript">
if (foo) bar(1 + 5)
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Jade - node template engine</h1>
<div id="container" class="col">
<p>You are amazing</p>
<p>Jade is a terse and simple templating language with a strong focus on performance and powerful features.</p>
</div>
</body>
</html>
The official jade tutorial is a great place to start. While that (and the syntax documentation) is being finished, you can view some of the old documentation here and here
API
For full API, see jade-lang.com/api
var jade = require('jade');
var fn = jade.compile('string of jade', options);
var html = fn(locals);
var html = jade.render('string of jade', merge(options, locals));
var html = jade.renderFile('filename.jade', merge(options, locals));
Options
filename
Used in exceptions, and required when using includescompileDebug
When false
no debug instrumentation is compiledpretty
Add pretty-indentation whitespace to output (false by default)
Browser Support
The latest version of jade can be download for the browser in standalone form from here. It only supports the very latest browsers though, and is a large file. It is recommended that you pre-compile your jade templates to JavaScript and then just use the runtime.js library on the client.
To compile a template for use on the client using the command line, do:
$ jade --client --no-debug filename.jade
which will produce filename.js
containing the compiled template.
Command Line
After installing the latest version of node, install with:
$ npm install jade -g
and run with
$ jade --help
Additional Resources
Tutorials:
Implementations in other languages:
Other:
License
MIT