Markout

Markout is an awesome Crystal DSL for HTML. It enables calling regular HTML tags as methods to generate HTML.

Markout ensures type-safe HTML with valid syntax, and automatically escapes attribute values. It supports HTML 4 and 5, and XHTML.

Examples:

p "A paragraph"
# => <p>A paragraph</p>

p do
  text "A paragraph"
end
# => <p>A paragraph</p>

h1 "A first-level heading", class: "heading"
# => <h1 class='heading'>A first-level heading</h1>

h1 class: "heading" do
  text "A first-level heading"
end
# => <h1 class='heading'>A first-level heading</h1>

ul id: "a-wrapper", class: "list-wrap" do
  ["aa", "bb", "cc"].each do |x|
    li x, class: "list-item"
  end
end
# => <ul id='a-wrapper' class='list-wrap'>
#      <li class='list-item'>aa</li>
#      <li class='list-item'>bb</li>
#      <li class='list-item'>cc</li>
#    </ul>

input type: "checkbox", checked: nil
# => HTML 4, 5: <input type='checkbox' checked>
# => XHTML: <input type='checkbox' checked='checked' />

Installation

Add this to your application's shard.yml:

dependencies:
  markout:
    github: GrottoPress/markout

Usage

Pages

With Markout, pages are created using regular Crystal structs and classes. Markout comes with a page mixin, which child pages can include, and override specific methods for their own use case:

require "markout"

# Create your own base page
abstract struct BasePage
  # Include the page mixin
  include Markout::Page

  # Set HTML version
  #
  # Versions:
  #   `HtmlVersion::HTML_5` (default)
  #   `HtmlVersion::XHTML_1_1`
  #   `HtmlVersion::XHTML_1_0`
  #   `HtmlVersion::HTML_4_01`
  #private def html_version : HtmlVersion
  #  HtmlVersion::XHTML_1_1
  #end

  private def body_tag_attr : NamedTuple
    {class: "my-body-class"}
  end

  private def inside_head : Nil
    meta charset: "UTF-8"
    head_content
  end

  private def inside_body : Nil
    header id: "header" do
      h1 "My First Heading Level", class: "heading"
      p "An awesome description", class: "description"
    end

    main id: main do
      body_content
    end

    footer id: "footer" do
      raw "<!-- I'm unescaped -->"
    end
  end

  private def head_content : Nil
  end

  private def body_content : Nil
  end
end

# Now, create a page
struct MyFirstPage < BasePage
  private def head_content : Nil
    title "My First Page"
  end

  private def body_content : Nil
    p "Hello from Markout!"
  end
end

# SEND OUTPUT TO CONSOLE

puts MyFirstPage.new
# => <!DOCTYPE html>\
#    <html lang='en'>\
#      <head profile='http://ab.c'>\
#        <meta charset='UTF-8'>\
#        <title>My First Page</title>\
#      </head>\
#      <body class='my-body-class'>\
#        <header id='header'>\
#          <h1 class='heading'>My First Heading Level</h1>\
#          <p class='description'>An awesome description</p>\
#        </header>\
#        <main id='main'>\
#          <p>Hello from Markout!</p>\
#        </main>\
#        <footer id='footer'>\
#          <!-- I'm unescaped -->\
#        </footer>\
#      </body>\
#    </html>

# OR, SERVE IT TO THE BROWSER

require "http/server"

server = HTTP::Server.new do |context|
  context.response.content_type = "text/html"
  context.response.print MyFirstPage.new
end

puts "Listening on http://#{server.bind_tcp(8080)}"

server.listen
# Visit 'http://localhost:8080' to see Markout in action

Components

You may extract out shared elements that do not exactly fit into the page inheritance structure as components, and mount them in your pages:

require "markout"

# Create your own base component
abstract struct BaseComponent
  include Markout::Component

  # Set HTML version
  #
  # Same as for pages.
  #private def html_version : HtmlVersion
  #  HtmlVersion::XHTML_1_1
  #end
end

# Create the component
struct MyFirstComponent < BaseComponent
  def initialize(users : Array(String))
    render(users)
  end

  private def render(users : Array(String)) : Nil
    ul class: "users" do
      users.each do |user|
        li user, class: "user"
        # Same as `li class: "user" do text(user) end`
      end
    end
  end
end

# Mount the component
struct MySecondPage < BasePage
  def initialize(@users : Array(String))
  end

  private def head_content : Nil
    title "Component Test"
  end

  private def body_content : Nil
    div class: "users-wrap" do
      mount MyFirstComponent, @users # Or `mount MyFirstComponent.new(@users)`
    end
  end
end

#puts MySecondPage.new(["Kofi", "Ama", "Nana"])

A component may accept named arguments and blocks:

# Create the component
struct MyLinkComponent < BaseComponent
  def initialize(label : String, url : String, **opts)
    render(label, url, **opts)
  end

  def initialize(url : String, **opts, &b : Proc(Component, Nil))
    render(label, url, **opts, &b)
  end

  private def render(label : String, url : String, **opts)
    args = opts.merge({href: url})
    args = {class: "link"}.merge(args)

    a label, **args
  end

  private def render(url : String, **opts, &b : Proc(Component, Nil))
    args = opts.merge({href: url})
    args = {class: "link"}.merge(args)

    a **args do b.call(self) end
  end
end

# Mount the component
struct MyThirdPage < BasePage
  private def body_content : Nil
    div class: "link-wrap" do
      mount MyLinkComponent, "Abc", "http://ab.c", "data-foo": "bar"
    end
  end
end

# OR mount with a block
struct MyThirdPage < BasePage
  private def body_content : Nil
    div class: "link-wrap" do
      mount MyLinkComponent, "http://ab.c", "data-foo": "bar" do |html|
        html.text("Abc")
      end
    end
  end
end

puts MyThirdPage.new
# => ...
#    <div class='link-wrap'>\
#      <a data-foo='bar' href='http://ab.c'>Abc</a>\
#    </div>
#    ...

Custom Tags

You may define arbitrary tags with #tag. This is particularly useful for rendering JSX or similar:

tag :MyApp, title: "My Awesome App" do
  p "My app is the best."
end
# => <MyApp title='My Awesome App'>\
#      <p>My app is the best.</p>\
#    </MyApp>

tag :MyApp, title: "My Awesome App"
# => <MyApp title='My Awesome App' />

tag :cuboid, width: 4, height: 3, length: 2 do
  text "A cuboid"
end
# => <cuboid width='4' height='3' length='2'>
#      A cuboid
#    </cuboid>

Handy methods

Apart from calling regular HTML tags as methods, the following methods are available:

#text(text : String): Use this to render escaped text
#raw(text : String): Use this render unescaped text

Alternatives

Check out the following, if Markout does not fit your needs:

crystal-lang/html_builder
Lucky framework comes with an in-built html builder.

Contributing

Fork it
Switch to the master branch: git checkout master
Create your feature branch: git checkout -b my-new-feature
Make your changes, updating changelog and documentation as appropriate.
Commit your changes: git commit
Push to the branch: git push origin my-new-feature
Submit a new Pull Request against the GrottoPress:master branch.

CrystalDoc.info

markout