Elegant clean way to include HTML in JavaScript files?

Question

I\'m building a small app with a few modal dialog windows. The windows require a tiny bit of HTML. I\'ve hard coded the window HTML in the javascript library but am not th

Answer 1

For multiline strings (no frameworks, just javascript) there are several solutions. See my answer to this SO Question. You could combine that with some simple templating:

String.prototype.template = String.prototype.template ||
        function (){
            var  args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments)
                ,str = this
                ,i=0
                ;
            function replacer(a){
                var aa = parseInt(a.substr(1),10)-1;
                return args[aa];
            }
            return  str.replace(/(\$\d+)/gm,replacer)
};
//basic usage:
'some #1'.template('string'); //=> some string
//your 'html' could look like:
var html =
  [ '<form action="javascript:emailDone();" method="post">',
    ' <div><label for="to">To</label>',
    '       <input id="to" type="text"></div>',
    ' <div><label for="from">From</label>',
    '       <input id="from" type="text" ',
    '         value="$0"></div>',
    ' <div><label for="subject">Subject</label>',
    '      <input id="subject" type="text" disabled="disabled" ',
    '        value="$1"></div>',
    ' <div><label for="body">Body</label>',
    '      <input id="body" type="text" disabled="disabled" ',
    '        value="$2"></div>',
    ' <div><input type="submit" value="Send"><input type="button" ',
    '        value="Cancel" ',
    '        onClick="javascript:$.fancybox.close();"></div>',
    '</form>'
  ] .join('').template(email, subject, body);