rust_wasm_dodrio_templating

html templating for dodrio
repo; version: 1.0.2 date: 2021-01-13 authors: Luciano Bestia

Html templating

In the past I wrote html inside Rust code with the macro html! from the crate typed-html
https://github.com/bodil/typed-html
It has also a macro dodrio ! created exclusively for the dodrio vdom.
I had two main problems with this approach:

1. Any change to the html required a recompiling. And that is very slow in Rust.
2. I could not add new html elements, that the macro don't recognize. I wanted to use SVG. There was not support for that.

I reinvented the wheel - "html templating".
First a graphical designer makes a html/css page that looks nice. No javascript, nothing is dynamic. It is just a graphical template.
Then I insert in it html comments and "data-" attributes that I can later replace in my code.
The html is not changed graphically because of it. So both the graphical designer and the programmer are still happy.
In my code I parse the html template as a microXml file. Basically they are the same with small effort. When I find a comment or "data-" attribute then the value of the next node is replaced.
I can replace attributes, strings and entire nodes. And I can insert event for behavior with "data-wt".
When developing, the html template is loaded and parsed and a dodrio node is created. That is not very fast. But I can change the html in real time and see it rendered without compiling the Rust code. This is super efficient for development.
I have in plans to add a Rust code generator, that creates the Rust code for the dodrio node before compile time. In that case nothing is parsed in runtime and I expect great speeds. But the flexibility of easily changing the html template is gone. For every change I must recompile the Rust code.

Used in projects

https://github.com/LucianoBestia/unforgettable7_game/blob/master/unforgettable7

cargo crev reviews and advisory

It is recommended to always use cargo-crev
to verify the trustworthiness of each of your dependencies.
Please, spread this info.
On the web use this url to read crate reviews. Example:
https://web.crev.dev/rust-reviews/crate/num-traits/