Plugins

Here you'll learn how to create a plugin for Eta by creating a plugin that enables layout support.

Note: this tutorial was created before Eta got built-in layout support. This plugin is no longer necessary if you want to use layouts, but we're leaving this tutorial up because it is a helpful example

tip

Feel free to publish NPM/Deno packages based on this code! A good rule of thumb is to begin plugin packages with eta_plugin_. For example, you could create a plugin called eta_plugin_layouts.

Plugin Code

plugin-inheritance.js
var layoutRegExp = /^@\s*layout\s*\(\s*"([^]*)"\)$/
module.exports = {
processAST: function (buffer, env) {
var firstItem = buffer[0]
if (firstItem.t === "e") {
var val = firstItem.val.trim()
if (layoutRegExp.test(val)) {
buffer.shift()
var layoutMatch = layoutRegExp.exec(val)
var filePath = layoutMatch[1]
var useLayoutCode =
"tR=" +
(env.async ? "await " : "") +
'E.includeFile("' +
filePath +
'",{content:tR})'
buffer.push({ t: "e", val: useLayoutCode })
}
}
return buffer
}
}

Server Code

index.js
var express = require("express")
var app = express()
var Eta = require("eta")
var EtaInherit = require("./plugin-inheritance")
Eta.configure({
plugins: [EtaInherit],
cache: false
})
app.engine("eta", Eta.renderFile)
app.set("view engine", "eta")
app.set("views", "./views")
app.get("/", function (req, res) {
res.render("index", {
favorite: "Eta"
})
})
app.listen(3000, function () {
console.log("listening to requests on port 3000")
})

Final Result

views/index.eta
<% @layout("./layout") %>
<h2>This page was rendered with Eta</h2>
My favorite template engine is <%= it.favorite %>
views/footer.eta
<b>This is the footer</b>
views/layout.eta
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Page about Eta</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Eta Rendered Page</h1>
<div>
<p>
Here's the content:<br />
===========================================
</p>
<div style="background:green;">
<%~it.content%>
</div>
<p>
===========================================
</p>
</div>
<%~ includeFile('./footer') %>
</body>
</html>
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