HMPL

Website • Documentation • Demo Sandbox • Examples

hmpl is a small template language for displaying UI from server to client. It is based on customizable requests sent to the server via fetch and processed into ready-made HTML. The language is syntactically object-based and integrated with JSON5. Reduce the size of your javascript files and display the same UI as if it was written in a modern framework.

Usage

import hmpl from "hmpl-js";

const templateFn = hmpl.compile(
  `<div>
      <button data-action="increment" id="btn">Click!</button>
      <div>Clicks: {{ src: "/api/clicks", after: "click:#btn" }}</div>
  </div>`
);

const clicker = templateFn(({ request: { event } }) => ({
  body: JSON.stringify({ action: event.target.getAttribute("data-action") }),
})).response;

document.querySelector("#app").append(clicker);

Why HMPL?

Using HMPL, you can multiply reduce the size of the application bundle. Full customization of the request based on the modern fetch standard, as well as support for all the functionality necessary for modern work in applications (request indicator, sending by event, automatic generation of body for the form, caching) and the syntax of the object in the markup, which requires a minimum number of characters, will help to build interaction with the server and client as efficiently as possible.

Features

• Customizable: Send a custom request to the server when receiving the UI
• Memory Preserving: Reduce file sizes on the client by several times
• Based on Fetch API: Use a modern standard instead of XMLHTTPRequest
• Server-oriented: Work with the server directly through markup and with a little js
• Generate thousands of DOM nodes from a single template: Work with large components not only on the server but also on the client
• Simple: Get ready-made UI from the server by writing a couple of lines of familiar object syntax
• Flexible: Can be used in almost any project due to not only working through a script, but also working in files with the .hmpl extension
• Integrated with JSON5: Flexible writing of objects by specs as in vanilla js, as well as the reliability of the parser used by millions of people.
• Small bundle size: Lots of functionality in a couple of kilobytes

Installation

hmpl can be installed in several ways, which are described in this section. This tool is a simple javascript file that is connected in the usual way through a script, or using the import construct in an environment that supports this (webpack build, parcel build etc.). Also, starting from version 2.2.0, the connection of the JSON5 module is required. The first and easiest way is to install using a CDN.

Package Manager

This method involves downloading through npm or other package managers.

npm i hmpl-js

Node.js is required for npm.

Along the path node-modules/hmpl/dist you can find two files that contain a regular js file and a minified one.

CDN

This method involves connecting the file through a third-party resource, which provides the ability to obtain a javascript file from npm via a link.

<script src="https://unpkg.com/json5/dist/index.js"></script>
<script src="https://unpkg.com/hmpl-js/dist/hmpl.min.js"></script>
<!--
  integrity="sha384-..."
  crossorigin="anonymous"
-->

This resource could be unpkg, skypack or other resources. The examples include unpkg simply because it is one of the most popular and its url by characters is not so long.

Manual download

You can install the package by simply downloading it as a file and moving it to the project folder.

<script src="https://unpkg.com/json5/dist/index.js"></script>
<script src="./hmpl.min.js"></script>

If, for some reason, you do not need the minified file, then you can download the full file from this link.

<script src="https://unpkg.com/json5/dist/index.js"></script>
<script src="./hmpl.js"></script>

The non-minified file is larger in size, but it is there as it is with all the formatting.

Ecosystem

Community support

The documentation contains main information on how the HMPL template language works. If you have any questions about how HMPL works, you can use the following resources:

• Github - In the discussion and issues sections you can ask any question you are interested in
• Discord - You can ask your question in the thematic channel "support"
• 𝕏 (Twitter) - There is a lot of interesting stuff there, concerning the template language and not only :)

You can also ask your question on Stack Overflow and address it in the resources described above.

Contribution

We have a Contributing Guide that describes the main steps for contributing to the project.

Thank you to all the people who have already contributed to HMPL, or related projects!

And also to old contributors

Fossa status

Licensed under MIT