goatee-js

     _______  _______  _______  _______  _______  _______
    |    ___||       ||       ||_     _||    ___||    ___|
    |   | __ |   _   ||   _   |  |   |  |   |___ |   |___
    |   ||  ||  |_|  ||  |_|  |  |   |  |    ___||    ___|
    |   |_| ||       ||   _   |  |   |  |   |___ |   |___
    |_______||_______||__| |__|  |___|  |_______||_______|
                                     . ,
                                     (\\
                                  .--, \\__
                                   `-.     *`-.__
                                     |          ')
                                    / \__.-'-, ~;
                                   /     |   { /
                    ._..,-.-"``~"-'      ;    (
                 .;'                    ;'    ´
            ~;,./                      ;'
               ';                     ;'
                ';                 /;'|
                 |    .;._.,;';\   |  |
                 \   /  /       \  |\ |
                  \ || |         | )| )
      ___         | || |         | || |            _______
     |   |  ~~~~~ | \| \  ~~~~~~ | \| \  ~~~~~~~  |  _____|
     |   |  "''"' `##`##' "'"''" `##`##' '"''"'"  | |_____
  ___|   |  '"'"''"'"''"''"''"'"'''"'"'''"''"'"'  |_____  |
 |       |  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   _____| |
 |_______|                                        |_______|

A goatee is the perfect complement for handlebar mustaches. :-{>~

Meaning

For those who like acronyms:

Generic Object Action Template Execution Environment

Objective

First of all a citation from the originating “google-jstemplate” project:

Template processing is the staple pattern for separation of data and presentation in web applications. But it usually works on one page at a time, which is inadequate for incremental, asynchronous page updates typical of Ajax applications.

This system provides templates that allow for:

• incremental processing: every processing operation produces valid output
• differential processing: output text is again a template.

It also fixes other undesirable properties of standard template processing:

• Wellformed output is guaranteed.
• Escaped by default.
• Templates are intelligible: input template is valid output.

And, of course:

• Pure javascript, HTML, browser side processing.

That's what goatee is all about. So what's the difference between “goatee”, “google-jstemplate” or other similar projects like “knockout.js” then ?

The answer: My goals. I promise that “goatee” will have …

• … html4, html5, xhtml 1.1 and xhtml5 flavours,
• … an extremly modular architecture,
• … an interpreter during development-phase, with quick'n'dirty instant updates,
• … small and fast pre-compiled bytecode for production-releases,
• … no external dependencies and no name collisions in browser environments with popular frameworks as jquery, underscore and so on,
• … all the features of google-jstemplate,
• … implementations for the following frameworks:
  • Express.js (Node)
  • Slim (PHP)
  • Symfony (PHP)
  • TYPO3 Flow (PHP)
  • Django (Python)
  • Rails (Ruby)
  • Grails (Groovy)
  • Play (Java/Scala)
• … 100% compatiblity for all runtimes in all those different languages, producing exactly the same results, no matter if it runs on the client- side (browser) or on the server-side,
• … content-management-extensions with the same look and feel as well as behaviour, no matter which implementation has been choosen and with versioning for all contents and assets,
• … a very low learning curve, because it's just javascript with css-philosophy combined. Which means you won't have to learn a new syntax or grammar.

Installation

Goatee is not yet installable, but some components are …

• goatee-script.js
• goatee-rules.js

Usage

Goatee is not yet useable, but some components are … see above.

Documentation

Read the annotated sources.

Development

Install dependencies:

• git-scm
• node.js (≥ 6.x)
• pygments

Install project:

$ git clone https://github.com/sjorek/goatee.js
$ cd goatee-js
$ npm install

Run build in *nix-like environments:

$ PATH=$PATH:./node_modules/.bin cake all

Run build in Windows environments (not tested):

$ set path=%PATH%;.\node_modules\.bin
$ setx path "%PATH%"
$ cake all

Credits go to …

• … Steffen Meschkat for meeting me in 2004 and sharing all his passion and knowledge about his (sadly proprietary) perl-based content-managment-system, which still is my main motivation behind this project.

• … Google Inc. and all contributors of google-jstemplate (especially Steffen Meschkat) as a source of motivation and inspiration.

• … Jeremy Ashkenas and all contributors of Coffee-Script.