Feature: contentFor block helper

Love the project. By far the easiest to get going so far for this node.js/express newbie.

The express-hbs project has a really neat feature I’d love to see added. I’m not well enough versed yet to create this and file a pull request. The contentFor helper is basically equiv to content placeholders in asp.net and very useful. Basically allows to adding content to a parent template/layout. Here’s the usage from express-hbs

layout.handlebars

{{{block "pageScripts"}}}

index.handlebars

{{#contentFor "pageScripts"}}
  CONTENT HERE
{{/contentFor}}

Is this something we can get added, or would it be possible to get a helper function we can add as middleware?

[smencer]

Just thought I’d chime in to say I was able to get the sample code above working in my application with a small modification:

    helpers: {
      block: function(name){
        var blocks = this._blocks;
            content = blocks && blocks[name];
        return content ? content.join('\n') : null;
      },
      contentFor: function(name, options){
        var blocks = this._blocks || (this._blocks = {});
            block = blocks[name] || (blocks[name] = []); //Changed this to [] instead of {}
        block.push(options.fn(this));
      }
    }

I’m now able to define a {{{block “pageScripts”}}} in my layout page and fill it with content from my views inside of:

{{#contentFor "pageScripts"}}
<script>
 // my page specific code here
</script>
{{/contentFor}}

Thanks for the sample code to get me jump started!

[ericf]

Thanks! Glad this project is useful to you 😃

This feature is definitely something that’s perfect for helpers. Here’s one way you could go about doing this:

var express = require('express'),
    exphbs  = require('express3-handlebars'),

    app = express(),
    hbs;

hbs = exphbs.create({
    helpers: {
        block: function (name) {
            var blocks  = this._blocks,
                content = blocks && blocks[name];

            return content ? content.join('\n') : null;
        },

        contentFor: function (name, options) {
            var blocks = this._blocks || (this._blocks = {}),
                block  = blocks[name] || (blocks[name] = []);

            block.push(options.fn(this));
        }
    }
});

app.engine('handlebars', hbs.engine);
app.set('view engine', 'handlebars');

// ...

---

Let me know if this helps (or even works, I didn’t test it.)