Preface

Jade is a templating engine for Node.js. It is a new, simplified language that compiles into HTML and is extremely useful for web developers. Jade is designed primarily for server-side templating in Node.js, but it can also be used in a variety of other environments to produce XML-like documents, such as HTML and RSS. This book is an introduction to Jade, and it will provide readers a with faster and cleaner way to write HTML that is more maintainable and automates redundant markup.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, What is Jade?, gives you the idea behind preprocessors and why Jade is awesome. Also, you will learn the process Jade uses to compile templates, and how to install/use Jade.

Chapter 2, Basic Syntax, covers the very basics of the syntax. This includes how indentation-based syntaxes work, how to write tags, text, attributes, comments, and some nifty shorthands for classes, IDs, and doctypes.

Chapter 3, Feeding Data into Templates, covers both the syntax used to output variables (such as interpolation) and how to actually send the data to the renderer.

Chapter 4, Logic in Templates, introduces flow control structures such as if, else, case, for, and while. Also, we discuss adding more advanced logic using raw JavaScript.

Chapter 5, Filters, introduces you the first "feature" of the Jade language—filters—a way to automatically compile other preprocessed languages (such as Stylus, Markdown, or CoffeeScript) directly in templates.

Chapter 6, Mixins, offers a way to write reusable functions inside templates in order to reduce redundancy.

Chapter 7, Template Inheritance, helps you learn about the last major part of the language, template inheritance, which is done through a block system. In addition, you learn about the include keyword, which lets us include non-Jade files such as scripts and styles.

Chapter 8, Organizing Jade Projects, shows us some of the best practices to follow while organizing Jade projects. Also, we look at the use of third-party tools to automate tasks.

Appendix, A Closing Note – Contributing Back to Jade, gives an introduction to the Jade community.

What you need for this book

• Some type of computer that is able to run Node.js

• A text editor that you don't hate, such as Sublime Text, vim, emacs, or nano

• The patience and determination required to learn

Who this book is for

This book is for web developers with at least a basic understanding of HTML and JavaScript.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "By default, jade compiles and renders the file, but if we only want it to compile into JS, we can use the --client argument."

A block of code is set as follows:

doctype html
html
  head
  body
    h1 Meet Jade
    p.
      A simple Jade example.
      You'll learn to write
      all of this in ch 2.
    p Jade FTW!

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ npm install jade -g

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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