axln/compiled-jade-render

Jade wrapper for Express.js which allows to render precompiled templates

compiled-jade-render

This tiny Jade wrapper for Express allows to eliminate a significant delay required to compile Jade templates when they are rendered for the first time after your application is started.

Installation

via npm:

$ npm install compiled-jade-render

Jade template compilation

The template compilation is usually used for browser rendering but nothing stops us from using it on the server to speed up initial responses.

To compile Jade templates, you first need to install Jade as a console command:

$ npm install -g jade

Then you can compile Jade templates to plain .js files:

jade --client template.jade

or in production case:

jade --client --no-debug template.jade

Note: Probably it's not a good idea to do it manually, so I use Jade file watcher in WebStorm with a slightly modified command (--client and --no-debug added), bacause by default Jade watcher compile .jade into .html.

For production it's recommended to use some build system (i.e. Gulp or Grunt) to compile all .jade tamplates into .js files.

Jade will generate a template.js file with a function which requires a single param (locals) and depends on Jade runtime:

function template(locals) {
  var buf = [];
  var jade_mixins = {};
  var jade_interp;
  // more rendering code here
}

Such js. files can be used in Express as templates for generating HTML.

Express Configuration

Just use the wrapper as an alternative template engine:

app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, 'views'));
app.set('view engine', 'js');
app.engine('js', require('compiled-jade-render'));

Benchmark

In my case this wrapper allowed to reduce initial (right after the lauch) page generation time for a simple template from approx. 450 ms to 10 ms. Subsequent requests were processed during 1-2 ms due the Node cache and opitimizations.

License

ISC