Ember.js with external handlebars template

Question

So, I\'m kind of new to Ember.js and it\'s been a couple of hours since I\'m stuck with this. I\'m playing with this bloggr client and what I want to accomplish is

Answer 1

You can attach a template to the object of available templates simply like so:

Ember.TEMPLATES.cow = Ember.Handlebars.compile("I'm a cow {{log this}}");

Or in your case maybe something like this:

var url = 'hbs/about.hbs',
    templateName = url.replace('.hbs', '');

Ember.$.ajax({
  url: url,         
  async: false,
  success: function (resp) {
    Em.TEMPLATES[templateName] = Ember.Handlebars.compile(resp);
  }         
});

Here's a lazy example of it being done in the application ready:

http://emberjs.jsbin.com/apIRef/1/edit

To be honest precompiling the templates beforehand (server side) is more performant for the end user.

Precompiling takes the raw handlebars and turns it into a plethora of javascript statements for use when building your views.

When the DOM is ready Ember scans the DOM for script elements of type "text/x-handlebars" and calls compile on their contents. It then adds the results to the Ember.TEMPLATES object with the name from the data-template-name attribute. This can add some completely unnecessary load time to the application.

For example when we sent in "I'm a cow {{log this}}" it was converted into the following javascript method

function anonymous(Handlebars,depth0,helpers,partials,data /**/) {
  this.compilerInfo = [4,'>= 1.0.0'];
  helpers = this.merge(helpers, Ember.Handlebars.helpers); data = data || {};
  var buffer = '', hashTypes, hashContexts, escapeExpression=this.escapeExpression;

  data.buffer.push("I'm a cow ");
  hashTypes = {};
  hashContexts = {};
  data.buffer.push(escapeExpression(helpers.log.call(depth0, "", {hash:{},contexts:[depth0],types:["ID"],hashContexts:hashContexts,hashTypes:hashTypes,data:data})));
  return buffer;
}

minimized to something ugly like this:

function anonymous(e,t,n,r,i){this.compilerInfo=[4,">= 1.0.0"];n=this.merge(n,Ember.Handlebars.helpers);i=i||{};var s="",o,u,a=this.escapeExpression;i.buffer.push("I'm a cow ");o={};u={};i.buffer.push(a(n.log.call(t,"",{hash:{},contexts:[t],types:["ID"],hashContexts:u,hashTypes:o,data:i})));return s}

Depending on what your back-end is you can compile and bundle your templates before hand and send them down in the html so you can avoid spending time compiling the templates client side.