grunt-handlebars-compiler

A Grunt plugin for pre-compiling Handlebars templates to a single concatenated file (or individually, whichever floats your boat).

Getting Started

IMPORTANT: This plugin requires Grunt 1.3.0 or higher - it is recommended that you always run the latest version

Install the task:

npm install grunt-handlebars-compiler

Then add this line to your project's Gruntfile.js:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-handlebars-compiler');

This allows you to use the 'handlebars' task to specify targets!

    handlebars: {
        all: {
            /*
                The output will be formatted as a Common JS module, using a require()
                statement where the argument is the Handlebars path provided in the option.
            */
            files: {
                'pkg/template-compile-test.js': 'template/*.handlebars'
            },
            options: {
                exportCommonJS: 'handlebars'
            }
        },
        some: {
            /*
                The output will be set to register two templates under 'myApp.templates'
                namespace after stripping the templateRoot:
                    * myApp.templates.template1
                    * myApp.templates.template2
            */
            files: {
                'pkg/template-compile-test2.js': [
                    'template/webApp-template1.handlebars',
                    'template/webApp-template2.handlebars'
                ]
            },
            options: {
                namespace: 'myApp.templates',
                templateRoot: 'webApp-',
                knownHelpers: ['if', 'each']
            }
        }
    }

The handlebars task has the following options, none of which are required. The defaults are shown here:

    {
        // specify a character to delimit individual compiled files in the output
        separator: '\n',				
        // specify a namespace for templates to be set to register to
        namespace: 'Handlebars.templates',
        // export compiled templates as AMD (RequireJS) module
        exportAMD: false,				
        // export as Common JS, provide string path to Handlebars instead of false
        exportCommonJS: false,			
        // only relevant if 'exportAMD === true' - provide path to Handlebars
        pathToHandlebars: '',			
        // provide an array of known helpers
        knownHelpers: [],				
        // compile with known helpers only (requires 'knownHelpers')
        knownOnly: false,				
        // a value to strip from the beginning of template names
        templateRoot: false,			
        // EXPERIMENTAL: specify that target templates are partials
        partials: false,					
        // return templates
        returnTemplates: false,			
        // only relevant if 'exportAMD: true' - return the module directly for use
        returnAMD: false
        // uses Handlebars whitespace control to compress HTML (but not Handlebars syntax; you'll have to do that yourself)
        compress: false
        // uses UglifyJS to minify the compiled output
        min: false
    }

Note: You may choose only one 'exportX' option. (Eg. you can't use exportAMD and exportCommonJS on the same task. That would just be straight silly.)

Documentation

The handlebars task is a multi task, meaning that it will implicitly iterate over all of its targets if no target is specified.

Testing

The test suite can be run using grunt test, which uses Nodeunit

Contributing

Feel free to fork if you see possible improvements or contact me directly if you want to contribute to this project (or just submit a pull request): [e-mail]

Author

• Matt Stills

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license.