What is handlebars.js?
Handlebars.js is a JavaScript library used to create reusable webpage templates with a combination of HTML, expressions, and text. Handlebars.js is a template engine that makes it easy to separate your HTML from the code that powers it, enabling you to write cleaner code. Because of this, Handlebars is popular, especially when you don't want to use a standalone front-end framework.
Handlebars.js is a JavaScript library used to create reusable webpage templates with a combination of HTML, expressions, and text. Handlebars.js is a template engine that makes it easy to separate your HTML from the code that powers it, enabling you to write cleaner code. Because of this, Handlebars is popular, especially when you don't want to use a standalone front-end framework.
Using Handlebars, or any other templating engine, to keep your HTML pages simple and tidy while keeping them detached from the logic-based JavaScript files is the most crucial usage of them all, and Handlebars does an excellent job of this.
- Handlebars is a viable choice for rendering in command-line applications, non-HTML text content, server-side rendering of pure contents, and other similar tasks.
- Handlebars have been ported to many programming languages, including Java and Python (Java, Rust, etc.)
Handlebars.js- a noteworthy templating engine
There are many JavaScript client-side templating engines but Handlebars.js is considered the best of all. Some of the other worthy templating engines other than Handlebars.js are Mustache.js, Underscore.js, ELS.js, and Dust.js. Handlebars.js supersedes Mustache.js and the reason for using Handlebars.js is as follows:
- 1
Handlebars is one of the most popular, advanced, feature-rich JavaScript templating engines with the most active community
- 2
Handlebars is a logic-less templating engine which means there is little to no logic in templates that are on the HTML page
- 3
The most important use of this JavaScript or any other templating engine is to keep the HTML pages simple, clean, and decoupled from the logic-based JavaScript files
- 4
HandleBars is a wise choice that will help you program more effectively and will help you adapt to JavaScript frameworks easily
Optimized functionalities of handlebars to make development easy
Templates
You need to include the library in your HTML before you can start writing your template. Templates can be added to your page by including script tags with a special type. The templates are easy to grasp because of their simple syntax which contains HTML and text, mixed with Handlebars expressions. Templates need to be compiled first before using JavaScript functions.
Expressions
Expressions are wrapped in double curly braces {{}} or triple curly braces {{{}}}. The data that is printed out in an expression {{}} will automatically get HTML escaped by handlebars. But there are times you wish to print raw HTML, in this case, triple curly braces expression {{{}}} should be used.
Context
Every template that is written has a context. Context is a JavaScript object that is passed to the compiled template. But there are helpers like #with or #each that will modify the context so that you can access the properties of the iterated object directly.
Helpers
Handlebars.js doesn’t allow you to write JavaScript directly with the templates instead it gives you helpers. Helpers are JavaScript functions that can be called from templates and help you reuse the code to create complex templates.
Block Helpers
Block helpers are just like those regular ones but with an opening and a closing tag like the #if and #each built-ins. These block helpers are extremely powerful but are a bit more complicated to create. It can modify the content and HTML they are wrapped around and can use them to reuse functionalities. They are also used to create large blocks of HTML in a reusable way.