point-of-view

Templates rendering plugin support for Fastify.

point-of-view decorates the reply interface with the view method for manage view engines that can be used to render templates responses.

Currently supports the following templates engines:

• ejs
• nunjucks
• pug
• handlebars
• marko
• mustache
• art-template
• twig
• liquid
• doT
• eta

In production mode, point-of-view will heavily cache the templates file and functions, while in development will reload every time the template file and function.

Note that at least Fastify v2.0.0 is needed.

Note: ejs-mate support has been dropped.

Benchmarks

The benchmark were run with the files in the benchmark folder with the ejs engine. The data has been taken with: autocannon -c 100 -d 5 -p 10 localhost:3000

• Express: 8.8k req/sec
• Fastify: 15.6k req/sec

Install

npm install point-of-view --save

Usage

const fastify = require('fastify')()

fastify.register(require('point-of-view'), {
  engine: {
    ejs: require('ejs')
  }
})

fastify.get('/', (req, reply) => {
  reply.view('/templates/index.ejs', { text: 'text' })
})

// With async handler be sure to return the result of reply.view
fastify.get('/', async (req, reply) => {
  const t = await something()
  return reply.view('/templates/index.ejs', { text: 'text' })
})

fastify.listen(3000, err => {
  if (err) throw err
  console.log(`server listening on ${fastify.server.address().port}`)
})

Or render a template directly with the fastify.view() decorator:

// With a promise
const html = await fastify.view('/templates/index.ejs', { text: 'text' })

// or with a callback
fastify.view('/templates/index.ejs', { text: 'text' }, (err, html) => {
  // ...
})

Like having 2 different declarations with different propertynames calling different partials:

fastify.register(require('../index'), {
  engine: { ejs: ejs },
  layout: './templates/layout-mobile.ejs'
  propertyName: 'mobile'
})
fastify.register(require('../index'), {
  engine: { ejs: ejs },
  layout: './templates/layout-desktop.ejs'
  propertyName: 'desktop'
})

If you want to set a fixed templates folder, or pass some options to the template engines:

fastify.register(require('point-of-view'), {
  engine: {
    ejs: require('ejs')
  },
  root: path.join(__dirname, 'view'),
  layout: 'template',
  viewExt: 'html', // it will add the extension to all the views
  options: {}
})

If you want to set a default context that the variable can be using in each view:

fastify.register(require('point-of-view'), {
  engine: {
    ejs: require('ejs')
  },
  defaultContext: {
    dev: process.env.NODE_ENV === 'development'
  }
})

and in the template files like pug can use the variable like:

link(src=dev?"link-to-dev.css":"link-to-pro.css")

Note that the data passing to the template will override the defaultContext

If you want to omit view extension, you can add includeViewExtension property as following:

fastify.register(require('point-of-view'), {
  engine: {
    ejs: require('ejs')
  },
  includeViewExtension: true
});

fastify.get('/', (req, reply) => {
  reply.view('/templates/index', { text: 'text' })
})

Note that to use include files with ejs you also need:

// get a reference to resolve
const resolve = require('path').resolve
// other code ...
// in template engine options configure how to resolve templates folder
  options: {
    filename: resolve('templates')
  }

and in ejs template files (for example templates/index.ejs) use something like:

<% include header.ejs %>

with a path relative to the current page, or an absolute path.

To use partials in mustache you will need to pass the names and paths in the options parameter:

  options: {
    partials: {
      header: 'header.mustache',
      footer: 'footer.mustache'
    }
  }

To use partials in handlebars you will need to pass the names and paths in the options parameter:

  options: {
    partials: {
      header: 'header.hbs',
      footer: 'footer.hbs'
    }
  }

To use layouts in handlebars you will need to pass the layout parameter:

fastify.register(require('point-of-view'), {
  engine: {
    handlebars: require('handlebars')
  },
  layout: './templates/layout.hbs'
});

fastify.get('/', (req, reply) => {
  reply.view('./templates/index.hbs', { text: 'text' })
})

To configure nunjunks environment after initialisation, you can pass callback function to options:

  options: {
    onConfigure: (env) => {
      // do whatever you want on nunjunks env
    }

  }

To configure liquid you need to pass the engine instance as engine option:

const { Liquid } = require('liquidjs')
const path = require('path')

const engine = new Liquid({
  root: path.join(__dirname, 'templates'),
  extname: '.liquid'
})

fastify.register(require('point-of-view'), {
  engine: {
    liquid: engine
  }
});

fastify.get('/', (req, reply) => {
  reply.view('./templates/index.liquid', { text: 'text' })
})

When using doT the plugin compiles all templates when the application starts, this way all .def files are loaded and both .jst and .dot files are loaded as in-memory functions. This behaviour is recommended by the doT team here. To make it possible it is necessary to provide a root or templates option with the path to the template directory.

const path = require('path')

fastify.register(require('point-of-view'), {
  engine: {
    dot: require('dot')
  },
  root: 'templates',
  options: {
    destination: 'dot-compiled' // path where compiled .jst files are placed (default = 'out')
  }
});

fastify.get('/', (req, reply) => {
  // this works both for .jst and .dot files
  reply.view('index', { text: 'text' })
})

To utilize html-minifier in the rendering process, you can add the option useHtmlMinifier with a reference to html-minifier, and the optional htmlMinifierOptions option is used to specify the html-minifier options:

// get a reference to html-minifier
const minifier = require('html-minifier')
// optionally defined the html-minifier options
const minifierOpts = {
  removeComments: true,
  removeCommentsFromCDATA: true,
  collapseWhitespace: true,
  collapseBooleanAttributes: true,
  removeAttributeQuotes: true,
  removeEmptyAttributes: true
}
// in template engine options configure the use of html-minifier
  options: {
    useHtmlMinifier: minifier,
    htmlMinifierOptions: minifierOpts
  }

To utilize html-minify-stream in the rendering process with template engines that support streams, you can add the option useHtmlMinifyStream with a reference to html-minify-stream, and the optional htmlMinifierOptions option is used to specify the options just like html-minifier:

// get a reference to html-minify-stream
const htmlMinifyStream = require('html-minify-stream')
// optionally defined the html-minifier options that are used by html-minify-stream
const minifierOpts = {
  removeComments: true,
  removeCommentsFromCDATA: true,
  collapseWhitespace: true,
  collapseBooleanAttributes: true,
  removeAttributeQuotes: true,
  removeEmptyAttributes: true
}
// in template engine options configure the use of html-minify-stream
  options: {
    useHtmlMinifyStream: htmlMinifyStream,
    htmlMinifierOptions: minifierOpts
  }

The optional boolean property production will override environment variable NODE_ENV and force point-of-view into production or development mode:

  options: {
    // force production mode
    production: true
  }

If you want to provide data which will be depended on e.g. request and available in all views you have to add property locals to reply object, like in the example below:

fastify.addHook('preHandler', function (request, reply, done) {
  reply.locals = {
    text: getTextFromRequest(request) // it will be available in all views
  }

  done()
})

Properties from reply.locals will override those from defaultContext, but not from data parameter provided to reply.view(template, data) function.

To require point-of-view as a dependency to a fastify-plugin, add the name point-of-view to the dependencies array in the plugin's opts.

fastify.register(myViewRendererPlugin,   {
  dependencies: ['point-of-view']
})

To forcefully clear cache when in production mode, call the view.clearCache() function.

fastify.view.clearCache()

Note

By default views are served with the mime type 'text/html; charset=utf-8', but you can specify a different value using the type function of reply, or by specifying the desired charset in the property 'charset' in the opts object given to the plugin.

Acknowledgements

This project is kindly sponsored by:

• nearForm
• LetzDoIt

License

Licensed under MIT.