Dynamic Templates

Templating Specs
Use Cases

• provide templates to users for dynamic surveys whose data can be attached to registrations
• allow users to create their own registration templates (either by editing js or via some DSL we create?)
• allow users to add metadata to their project components
• easily allow for models to be populated using json
• easy creation of html form elements: input (text), textarea, selection/option, checkbox, slider (jquery?), radio buttons, buttons

Frameworks should be

• logic-full
• well-maintained/active community
• easy to learn
• relatively lightweight
• customizable/easy to extend

Current Framework

Ember.js

Current Screenshots
screenshots directory

• selecting an existing template from dropdown
• viewing example form
• example of dynamic interaction in form
  • start of dynamic interaction
  • finish of dynamic interaction

Chosen Framework

Knockout.js highly recommended, haven't finished reviewing all options though

Reviewed frameworks

• framework name
  • pros
  • cons
  • notes
• jade
  • pros
    • good documentation
    • good community, maybe not as active as knockout.js?
    • mixins
    • logic
  • cons
• knockout.js
  • pros
    • uses logic
    • really well documented, seems intuitive and customizable
    • active community: multiple posts per day on forums
  • cons
    • nothing, this is the platonic ideal of javascript frameworks
  • notes
    • the live tutorial is a beautiful example for providing a way for users to write js to show live results. in fact, it might be a perfect ui for allowing users to create custom registration forms. this is something we could use to let people build forms if they are comfortable enough to try editing js when provided immediate feedback.
    • just the templating/data-binding?
• javascriptmvc
  • pros
    • good documentation
  • cons
  • notes
• embeddedjs
  • pros
    • nice set of view helpers to build on
  • cons
    • sparse documentation
    • community not very active: only 27 issues in tracker, no mailing list activity since 2012 (and most in 2009/2010)

organize these

• serenade js
• http://canjs.us/#can_ejs
• http://jacwright.com/438/javascript-data-binding/
• Angular - just the templating/data-binding?
• Underscore templating + some sort of data-binding?

Commentary

Good post from 2011 from linked in compares a lot of different frameworks. The client-side templating throwdown: mustache, handlebars, dust.js, and more. They ended up choosing dust.js.