warning : I'm not using this plugin anymore. If you need an upgrade for newer versions of Ember.js and/or Handlebars, please raise an issue with the targeted versions. I promise I'll release a new version very quickly.

Ember.js templates precompiler plug-in for Grails

This plug-in precompiles EmberJS powered Handlebars templates on the server side.

It integrates with grails resources plugin to allow subsequent minification, gzip and more.

It's a fork from Matt Sheehan's grails-handlebars-resources plugin with two differences :

• it specifically targets Handlebars templates with added EmberJS capabilities
• it does not declare any resource module.

The goals are:

• Cleanliness and readability: templates are compiled from plain text files (not embedded somewhere in a gsp, not in javascript strings) and can be in the same directory as your Ember Application is.
• Performance: template precompilation meets the ember team preconization

Installation

Add this line to BuildConfig.groovy plugins section :

    runtime ":ember-templates-precompiler:0.4.3"

warning : this plugin requires rhino 1.7R4 (and above). Previous versions should be excluded from other plugins. Typically, if you use lesscss resources and handlebars resources plugin:

    compile (":lesscss-resources:1.3.0.3") {
        excludes([ group: 'rhino', name: 'js'],[name: 'rhino'])
    }
    runtime (":handlebars-resources:0.3.1")  {
        excludes([ group: 'rhino', name: 'js'],[name: 'rhino'])
    }

Usage

You can see a possible usage of this plugin here : grails-ember-trek

Directory Structure Example

web-app
├── js
│   ├── emberapp
│   │   ├── app.js
│   │   ├── controllers
│   │   │   ├── user.js
│   │   │   └── tabs.js
│   │   ├── templates
│   │   │   ├── user.embbars
│   │   │   └── tab.embbars
│   │   └── views
│   │       ├── user.js
│   │       ├── tab.js

Note: I chose '.embbars' to be the arbitrary extension managed by this plugin; My first clean thought was .emberhandlebars but it was just too long for me...

Declaring Resources (following the previous example)

emberapp {
    dependsOn 'handlebars,emberjs' // previously declared modules
    resource url: 'js/ember-app/app.js'
    resource url: 'js/ember-app/controllers/user.js'
    resource url: 'js/ember-app/controllers/tabs.js'
    resource url: 'js/ember-app/templates/user.embbars', attrs: [type: 'js'], bundle:'bundle_emberapp'
    resource url: 'js/ember-app/templates/tab.embbars', attrs: [type: 'js'], bundle:'bundle_emberapp'
    resource url: 'js/ember-app/views/user.js'
    resource url: 'js/ember-app/views/tab.js'
}

• attrs[type]: must be js.
• bundle: must be set as will not default correctly. To add to default bundle use bundle_<module name>.

Using with Ember.js views

Simply give the template name (see next section) to the view:

userView = Ember.View.extend({
    templateName: 'user'
});

See the Ember.js Handlebars section for more information.

Template Names

Template names are based on web-app relative paths. If the relative path is js/ember-app/templates/user.embbars, then the template name will be "js/ember-app/templates/user". The .embbars extension is of course removed. The templatesRoot config value should be used to customize this name to your needs. For example, setting http://www.envjs.com

grails.resources.mappers.emberhandlebars.templatesRoot = 'js/ember-app/templates'

will change the template name to just user.

The plugin also supports multiple roots, but be aware of possible name conflicts. Example:

grails.resources.mappers.emberhandlebars.templatesRoots = ['js/ember-app/templates','js/other-ember-app/templates']

The default path separator is /. If you want to change it, you can specify a value for templatesPathSeparator in the configuration. For example, adding

grails.resources.mappers.emberhandlebars.templatesPathSeparator = '.'

will change the template name to js.ember-app.templates.user (in the case you haven't set the templatesRoot config value).

Configuration

All configuration variables should be relative to:

grails.resources.mappers.emberhandlebars

• templatesRoot: The root folder of the templates relative to web-app. This value will be stripped from template paths when calculating the template name. Default is none.
• templatesRoots: The same as above but accepts a list.
• templatesPathSeparator: The delimiter to use for template names. Default is /

Notes

• The plugin makes internal use of handlebars-xx.js and ember-template-compiler.js which I found to be part of the distribution of ember after building ember.js myself. Those resources are not exposed.
• IntelliJ has a plugin for Handlebars, you can use it to highlight syntax of *.embbars files.

Changelog

v1.0.0

• versioning policy from now on : version numbers mirrors Ember's version numbers for the sake of clarity.
• compatible with ember-1.0.0.js (and ember-1.0.0-rc.7.js)

v0.4.3

• compatible with ember-1.0.0-rc.7.js

v0.4.2

• compatible with ember-1.0.0-rc.5.js and ember-1.0.0-rc.6.js

v0.4.1

• compatible with ember-1.0.0-rc.1 & ember-1.0.0-rc.2 & current head
• got rid of ember itself and envjs -> results in performance enhancement
• log each compiled template name: debug "org.grails.plugin.ember.handlebars" in config/log4j closure

v0.4.0

• updates : ember-1.0.0-rc.1 and handlebars-1.0.rc.3
• in the previous version ember code was a little hacked, this is no longer the case due to the usage of EnvJs.

v0.3.0

• ember update: ember-1.0.0-pre.4 and handlebars-1.0.rc.2.js

v0.2.1

• non-blocking bug fix (learn more in commits comments)

v0.2

• support for multiple templates roots

v0.1

• first release : ember-1.0.pre.js and handlebars-1.0.rc.1.js