jade template engine (under node.js): multi-line block without pipe symbol

Question

I\'m currently using Jade on a new project. It seems well-suited to composing webapp layouts, but not for writing static content, such as a web page of

elements containing

Answer 1

After some tinkering, I worked out the details of a filter that accomplishes this. Posting the answer here since I imagine this will be useful to others using jade.

The code to create the filter turns out to be quite simple:

var jade = require ("jade");

jade.filters.text = function(block, compiler){
    return new TextBlockFilter(block).compile();
};

function TextBlockFilter(node) {
    this.node = node;
}

TextBlockFilter.prototype.__proto__ = jade.Compiler.prototype;

TextBlockFilter.prototype.visit = function(node){

    // first this is called with a node containing all the block's lines
    // as sub-nodes, with their first word interpreted as the node's name
    //
    // so here, collect all the nodes' text (including its name)
    // into a single Text node, and then visit that instead.
    // the child nodes won't be visited - we're cutting them out of the
    // parse tree

    var text = new jade.nodes.Text();
    for (var i=0; i < node.length; i++) {
        text.push (node[i].name + (node[i].text ? node[i].text[0] : ""));
    }
    this.visitNode (text);
};

And then the markup looks like this. Note that it allows you to include other jade stuff in between :text blocks:

p
  :text
    This is my first line of text,
    followed by another
    and another.  Now let's include a jade link tag:
  a(href="http://blahblah.com")
  :text
    and follow it with even more text 
    and more,
    etc