Detailed introduction to the principles of high-performance JavaScript template engine (graphics and text)

With the development of the web, front-end applications have become more and more complex, and back-end-based javascript(Node.js) has also begun to emerge. At this time, javascript has been placed on greater expectations, and at the same time, the idea of ​​​​javascript MVC also began to become popular. javascript Template engine As the most important part of the separation of data and interface, it has attracted more and more attention from developers. In the past year, it has flourished in the open source community, and has appeared on Twitter, Taobao, Sina Weibo, They can be seen in large websites such as Tencent QQ Zone and Tencent Weibo.

This article will use the simplest example code to describe the principles of the existing javascript template engine, including the feature implementation principles of the new generation javascript template engine artTemplate. Welcome to discuss together.

artTemplate Introduction

artTemplate is a new generation of javascript template engine. It uses pre-compilation to make a qualitative leap in performance, and makes full use of the javascript engine features to make its performance both front-end and back-end. Excellent performance on both ends. In the rendering efficiency test under chrome, it was 25 and 32 times that of the well-known engines Mustache and micro tmpl respectively.

In addition to the performance advantages, the Detailed introduction to the principles of high-performance JavaScript template engine (graphics and text)ging function is also worth mentioning. The template Detailed introduction to the principles of high-performance JavaScript template engine (graphics and text)ger can accurately locate the template statement that caused the rendering error, which solves the pain of being unable to Detailed introduction to the principles of high-performance JavaScript template engine (graphics and text) during the process of writing templates, makes development more efficient, and avoids the entire application crashing due to a single template error.

artTemplate All in 1.7kb(gzip)!

Basic principles of javascript template engine

Although each engine has different implementation methods from template syntax, syntax parsing, variableassignment,stringsplicing It's different, but the key rendering principle is still dynamic execution of javascript strings.

Regarding the dynamic execution of javascript strings, this article uses a template code as an example:

This is a very simple template writing method, in which "" is clo seTag (logical statement closing tag), if openTag is followed by "=", the contents of the variable will be output.

HTML statements and Variable output statements are output directly, and the parsed string is similar:

After the syntax analysis is completed, it will usually still Return rendering method:

Rendering test:

In the above render method , template variable assignment uses the with statement, string splicing uses the array push method to improve performance under IE6 and 7, jQuery The micro template engine tmpl developed by the author john is this For a typical representative of this approach, see: http://www.php.cn/

It can be seen from the principle implementation that there are two problems to be solved in the traditional javascript template engine:

1 , Performance: The template engine relies on the Function constructor when rendering. Function, like eval, setTimeout, and setInterval, provides a method of using text to access the JavaScript parsing engine, but the performance of executing JavaScript in this way is very low. .

2. Debugging: Since it is a dynamic execution string, if an error is encountered, the Detailed introduction to the principles of high-performance JavaScript template engine (graphics and text)ger cannot capture the source of the error, making template BUG Detailed introduction to the principles of high-performance JavaScript template engine (graphics and text)ging extremely painful. In an engine without fault tolerance, local templates may even cause the entire application to crash due to data anomalies. As the number of templates increases, maintenance costs will increase dramatically.

artTemplate The secret of high efficiency

1. Pre-compilation

In the above template engine implementation principle, because template variables need to be assigned values, each rendering requires dynamic compilation of javascript strings to complete variable assignments. However, the compilation and assignment process of artTemplate is completed before rendering. This method is called "pre-compilation". The artTemplate template compiler will extract all template variables according to some simple rules and declare them in the head of the rendering function . This function is similar to:

This automatic The generated function is just like a hand-written JavaScript function. With the same number of executions, both CPU and memory usage are significantly reduced, and the performance is close to the limit.

It is worth mentioning that many features of artTemplate are based on precompiled implementation, such as sandbox specifications and custom syntax.

2. Faster string addition method

Many people mistakenly believe that the array push method will splice strings faster than +=. You must know that this is only for IE6 -8 browsers. Actual measurements show that using += in modern browsers is faster than array push. In the v8 engine, using += is 4.7 times faster than array concatenation. Therefore, artTemplate uses two different string splicing methods based on the characteristics of the javascript engine.

artTemplate Debug modePrinciple

Front-end templateThe engine is not like the back-end template engine, it is dynamic parsing, so the Detailed introduction to the principles of high-performance JavaScript template engine (graphics and text)ger cannot locate the error line number, and artTemplate uses a clever way to allow the template Detailed introduction to the principles of high-performance JavaScript template engine (graphics and text)ger to pinpoint the template statement that caused the rendering error, for example:

artTemplate supports two types of error capture, One is Render Error and Syntax Error.

1. Rendering errors

Rendering errors are generally caused by template data errors or variable errors. Only when errors are encountered during rendering will the Detailed introduction to the principles of high-performance JavaScript template engine (graphics and text) mode be entered and recompiled. template without affecting normal template execution efficiency. The template compiler records the line number according to the template newline character. The compiled function is similar to:

When an error is encountered during the execution, an exception will be thrown immediately Template According to the corresponding line number, the template Detailed introduction to the principles of high-performance JavaScript template engine (graphics and text)ger then checks the corresponding statement of the template according to the line number and prints it to the console.

2. Compilation errors

Compilation errors are generally template grammar errors, such as unqualified nesting, unknown syntax, etc. Since artTemplate does not perform complete lexical analysis, it cannot determine the location of the error source. It can only output the original text of the error message and source code for developers to judge.

Open source and reduce expenditure

artTemplate is released based on the open source license. Both commercial companies and individuals can use it in projects for free. We welcome joint improvement.

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