Questions about Maud html templating library

help
1

  1. I want to declare html layout in external html files like it's normally done. Can I use Maud with external html files?

  2. Also, can I use master-layout html templates and inherit child-templates from them? That is, I'd have one master html layout page with the shared header and footer and a few child templates with their own content but which share the same footer and header.

https://lfairy.gitbooks.io/maud/content/

1 Like
2

Those are good questions! Maud isn't mature yet so the best practices aren't set in stone. But I'll answer your questions as well as I can.

  1. If you just want to keep your templates in a separate file, then Rust's module system works great:

    // views.rs
use std::io;
use maud;

fn main_page(w: &mut io::Write, title: &str) -> io::Result<()> {
    html_utf8!(w, {
        title ^title
        // ...
    }
}

    If you want to load templates at run-time or use <html> syntax, then I'm afraid that's out of scope for the library. Maud is integrated tightly with Rust itself (especially the macro system) so it'll be hard to add anything dynamic.

    A utility that translates plain HTML to Maud syntax would be a great though. With libraries like html5ever such a tool should be straightforward to write.

  2. There is a (currently undocumented) bit of syntax, @call, which can invoke a callback in the middle of a template:

    use std::fmt;
use std::io;
fn master(w: &mut io::Write, title: &str, body: F) where
    F: FnOnce(&mut fmt::Write) -> fmt::Result
{
    html_utf8!(w, {
        title { "My favorite pony - " ^title }
        link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" /
        // Call the child template here
        @call body
    })
}

    Then you can call the master template with a sub-template like so:

    master(w, "You!", |w| html!(w, {
    p "My favorite pony is... you!"
    p "You're the cutest, funniest, all round pony-est pony there is!"
})

Hope this helps.

3
  1. Thanks. But I'd like an external html file.