Rails - May 2006 - Radius 0.0.1 -- Powerful Tag-Based Templates

I am pleased to announce the immediate release of Radius 0.5.0.

Radius is a small, but powerful tag-based template language for Ruby
inspired by the template languages used in MovableType
<www.movabletype.org> and TextPattern <www.textpattern.com>. It uses
tags similar to XML, but can be used to generate any form of plain text
(HTML, e-mail, etc...).

This release is much more feature complete than previous releases with 
it''s own domain language and support for nested tags.

 From the change log:

0.5.0
   * Created a DSL for tag definitions (introducing a DSL makes this
     version of Radiant incompatible with the last). The DSL has the
     following features:
     - full support for nested tags
     - global and local tag variables
     - Contexts can now be defined dynamically (instead of being
       subclassed)
     - see the QUICKSTART for more info
   * Many refactorings of the library and unit tests.
   * Changed the license to the MIT-LICENSE.
   * Updated documentation to reflect the changes.
   * Updated the version number to reflect the maturity of the code base.

Download:
   http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=1262

Documentation:
   http://radius.rubyforge.org

Instalation:
   % gem install --remote radius

A small example:

   require ''radius''

   # Define tags on a context that will be available to a template:
   context = Radius::Context.new do |c|
     c.define_tag ''hello'' do
       ''Hello world''
     end
     c.define_tag ''repeat'' do |tag|
       number = (tag.attr[''times''] ||
''1'').to_i
       result = ''''
       number.times { result << tag.expand }
       result
     end
   end

   # Create a parser to parse tags that begin with ''r:''
   parser = Radius::Parser.new(context, :tag_prefix => ''r'')

   # Parse tags and output the result
   puts parser.parse("A small example:\n" +
     ''<r:repeat times="3">* <r:hello
/>!\n</r:repeat>'')

Output:

   A small example:
   * Hello world!
   * Hello world!
   * Hello world!

Learn more by reading the Quick Start guide:
   http://radius.rubyforge.org/files/QUICKSTART.html

Enjoy!

--
John Long
http://wiseheartdesign.com/

On 5/1/06, John W. Long <ng@johnwlong.com> wrote:
> I am pleased to announce the immediate release of Radius 0.5.0.
>
> Radius is a small, but powerful tag-based template language for Ruby
> inspired by the template languages used in MovableType
> <www.movabletype.org> and TextPattern <www.textpattern.com>. It
uses
> tags similar to XML, but can be used to generate any form of plain text
> (HTML, e-mail, etc...).
Hi, I d/l the current release 0.5.0 and some things didn''t work. The
docs say that the default tag prefix is ''radius'', but the
default when
I created it was nil. This then only works for tags like this:

<:hello name="john" />

Also the Quickstart guide has an example using just

c=Context.new

But you need:

c=Radius::Context.new

Cool lib tho. I''d previously been using MasterView [1] and there are
some similarities. But I like the way I can create individual contexts
and reuse them here. I can use them in helper libs, inside RHTML
templates, etc. I''m attempting a larger DSL around this.

One thing, I don''t get is how to get these to automatically get called
from within rails. I guess, you have to just use erb''s
<%parser.parse ''<r:my_tag /> %>

Is there a way in Rails to intercept the default render dispatch with
your own thing? There is the block parameter to render, but does that
do anything. Should there be a specific file extension, say file.rad
which would fire up Radius to do the parsing? MV does this somehow,
but it is dark magic.


Ed
[1] MasterView - Rails-optimized (x)html friendly template engine
http://masterview.org/
> --
> John Long
> http://wiseheartdesign.com/
-- 
Ed Howland
http://greenprogrammer.blogspot.com