Chameleon templates for javascript files?

chameleon, javascript, pyramid, python

Solution

Yes; you generally put context-specific information like expanded routes into the templates and access this information from your (static) JavaScript libraries.

Including the context info can be done in various ways, depending on taste:

You could use a data attribute on a tag in your generated HTML:

<body data-viewurl="http://www.example.com/route/to/view">
    ...
</body>

which you then, in your static JS code load with the jQuery `.data()` function:

var viewurl = $('body').data('viewurl');

Use a made-up LINK tag relationship to include links in the document head:

<head>
    <link rel="ajax-datasource" id="viewurl"
          href="http://www.example.com/route/to/view" />
    ...
</head>

which can be retrieved using `$('link#viewurl').attr('href')`, or `$('link[rel=ajax-datasource]').attr('href')`. This only really works for URL information.

Generate JS variables straight in your template, to be referenced from your static code:

<head>
    ...
    <script type="text/javascript">
       window.contextVariables = {
           viewurl = "http://www.example.com/route/to/view",
           ...
       };
    </script>
</head>

and these variables are referable directly with `contextVariables.viewurl`.

Problem

I am developing a simple pyramid application where I am using JQuery to do AJAX requests. I have until now had my javascript code within my chameleon templates. Now I want to extract my javascript into another location (e.g. as static resources). My problem is that I find my javascript code relies on dynamically generated content like so: ``` $.post("${request.route_url('my_view')}",{'data': 'some data'}, function(html){ $("#destination").html(html); }); ``` The dynamic element being: ``` "${request.route_url('my_view')}" ``` Which is calling the route_url method of the request object within the template. Is there a recognised pattern for separating such javascript files into their own templates and providing routes and views for them or do I simply keep my javascript in my page template?

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