aframe-template-component

A template component for A-Frame VR.

Features:

Simple ES6-style templating
Defining context variables via data attributes or from components
Agnostic template engine support, choose from popular templating engines
Rendering templates before, at the beginning, at the end, or after entities
Loading templates defined within script tags
Loading external templates
Lazy-loading template engines

Supports:

Vanilla HTML (with basic ES6 templating)
Handlebars.js
Pug (formerly Jade)
mustache.js
Nunjucks

Basic Example

<a-scene>
  <a-assets>
    <script id="boxesTemplate" type="text/html">
      <a-box color="${box1color}" position="-1 0 -5"></a-box>
      <a-box color="${box2color}" position="0 1 -5"></a-box>
      <a-box color="${box3color}" position="1 0 -5"></a-box>
    </script>
  </a-assets>

  <a-entity template="src: #boxesTemplate"
            data-box1color="red" data-box2color="green" data-box3color="blue"></a-entity>
</a-scene>

Properties

template

Property	Description
src	Selector to a `<script template>` element or a URL to an external template file.
data	Pass a component name to use the component's data as the dataset for the template context variables.
insert	Where to insert the rendered HTML using insertAdjacentHTML
type	To explicitly define the type of templating engine to use (handlebars, jade, mustache, nunjucks, html).

Local context variables for the template are passed through the element's dataset or through the data property. If both are defined, they will be combined.

template-set

Property	Description
on	Event name to listen to before initializing template component.
data	What to set `template.data` to once event is fired.
src	What to set `template.src` to once event is fired.

Vanilla HTML

If type is not defined and we are loading it from an external template, then the component will render raw HTML.

Events

Event	Description
templaterendered	Emitted when the template is rendered

Script Tag Type

If loading from a script tag, it must have the type attribute defined. The component will try to infer it from the script tag type attribute. It will look within the attribute string for one of handlebars, jade, mustache, nunjucks, or html:

<script type="text/x-nunjucks-template">

Usage

Browser Installation

Install and use by directly including the browser files:

<head>
  <title>My A-Frame Scene</title>
  <script src="https://aframe.io/releases/0.9.0/aframe.min.js"></script>
  <script src="https://unpkg.com/aframe-template-component@3.2.1/dist/aframe-template-component.min.js"></script>
</head>

<body>
  <a-scene>
    <a-assets>
      <script id="butterflies" type="text/x-nunjucks-template">
        {% for x in range(0, 10) %}
          {% for z in range(0, 10) %}
            <a-entity template="src: butterfly.template; type: handlebars"
                      data-position="{{ x * 10 }} 1 {{ z * 10 }}"></a-entity>
          {% endfor %}
        {% endfor %}
      </script>

      <script id="forest" type="text/x-nunjucks-template">
        {% for x in range(0, 10) %}
          {% for z in range(0, 10) %}
            <a-entity template="src: tree.template; type: handlebars; data: tree-data"
                      data-position="{{ x * 10 }} 0 {{ z * 10 }}"
                      tree-data="trunkColor: #623B1C; leaves: 500"></a-entity>
          {% endfor %}
        {% endfor %}
      </script>

      <script id="clouds" type="text/x-jade-template">
        - for (var x = 0; x < 5; x++) {
          - for (var z = 0; z < 5; z++) {
            a-entity(geometry="primitive: box; depth: 8; height: 1; width: 6", material="opacity: 0.2", position="#{x * 20} 15 #{z * 20}")
          - }
        - }
      </script>
    </a-assets>

    <a-entity template="src: #forest"></a-entity>
    <a-entity template="src: #butterflies"></a-entity>
    <a-entity template="src: #clouds"></a-entity>
  </a-scene>
</body>

NPM Installation

Install via NPM:

npm install aframe-template-component

Then register and use.

require('aframe');
require('aframe-template-component');

Troubleshooting

Note if using this within React, make sure the template is defined outside of React's root. React will treat the template as actual DOM rather than a string.

aframe-template-component