Intro to Haml

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HAML or, how to get <arrowheads> out of your face Presented by Clifford Heath

description

Presentation on HAML given by Clifford Heath at the Melbourne Ruby group 2007/08/30.

Transcript of Intro to Haml

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HAMLor, how to get <arrowheads> out of your face

Presented by Clifford Heath

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Is THIS YOU?

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when you see...<div id="column1" class= "robust"> <div class="sidebaritem"> <div class="sbihead"> <h1>Status Watch</h1> </div> <div class="sbicontent"> <%= render :partial => 'layouts/sidebar', :locals => { :value =>@mvalue } %> </div> </div> <div class="sidebaritem"> <div class="sbihead"> <h1>Your Account</h1> </div> <div class="sbilinks"> <ul> <% if session[:user_id] %> <li><%= link_to 'Log Out', :controller => 'authenticate', :action => 'logout' %></li> <% if @user && @user[:is_admin] -%> <li><%= link_to "Administration", :controller => 'admin', :action => 'index' %></li></etc></etc></etc> the right number of times ...

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With HAML...

#column1.robust .sidebaritem .sbihead %h1 Status Watch .sbicontent = render :partial => 'layouts/sidebar', :locals => { :value =>@mvalue } .sidebaritem .sbihead %h1 Your Account .sbilinks %ul - if @user %li= link_to 'Log Out', :controller => 'authenticate', :action => 'logout' - if @user[:is_admin] %li= link_to "Administration", :controller => 'admin', :action => 'index'

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What’s Changed?

All <arrowheads> are gone

Tags and code both self-close by indentation

id=”xyz” and class=”abc” are just #xyz and .abc

<div> is the default tag - for others, use %tag

<%= some code %> is now just = some code

Same for <% some code -%>, use - some code

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Visual Simplicity

The RHTML version has 261 lexical tokens

counting each word in strings and syntactic white-space

The HAML version has 117 tokens

That makes it easier on the eyes and the fingers!

Markup Haiku

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Read it again...

#column1.robust .sidebaritem .sbihead %h1 Status Watch .sbicontent = render :partial => 'layouts/sidebar', :locals => { :value =>@mvalue } .sidebaritem .sbihead %h1 Your Account .sbilinks %ul - if @user %li= link_to 'Log Out', :controller => 'authenticate', :action => 'logout' - if @user[:is_admin] %li= link_to "Administration", :controller => 'admin', :action => 'index'

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Extra benefits

Need care to close tags correctly in RHTML

In HAML, generated code is indented properly

including after nesting layouts and partials!

valid XHTML with no extra effort

DIVs almost always get a class or an ID or both

Plays well with RHTML during conversion

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Other niceties

Attribute values are Ruby code:%label{:for=>@field.name}= @field.description+’:’

Ruby blocks are automatically closed:%table - @people.each do |person| %tr %td= person.name%p.footer

You can declare multiple classes, etc:%td.person.alignleft#husband= @husband.name

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Other niceties... 2

ID and class attributes can come from an object:%div[@mother]uses @mother.class and @mother.id to become:<div class=”person” id=”person_5724”>

Most self-closing tags are recognisedothers may be declared self-closed: %br/

Comments start with a single / and are output!Even multi-line; a comment wraps indented content

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Other niceties... 3

Automatic generation of DOCTYPE tags:!!! and !!! XML become<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

Continue a long line using a trailing |

:filter passes the content to the filter:%p :markdown Textile ======= Hello, *World*

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Tools

Syntax highlighting modules available

JEdit, Eclipse + RadRails, TextMate, (G)Vim, Komodo, Emacs

or simple VIM setup (in your ~/.vimrc):

au BufRead,BufNewFile *.haml set sw=2 sts=2 et

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How to install

./script/plugin install http://svn.hamptoncatlin.com/haml/tags/stable

Also available as a GEM for use outside Rails

Website: http://haml.hamptoncatlin.com/

See also SASS - similar approach for stylesheets

Developer discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/haml

Thanks to Hampton Catlin and his contributors!