I frequently write short snippets of HTML that I want to replicate in
many places, like:
<div class="friend_selector">
<div class="access_photos" users="[]"></div>
<input id="main_access_input" name="access_input"
class="access_input" size="30" type="text" value="" />
</div>
So I can put this into a .html file "friend_selector.html", and then
include it whenever I need this. But I often need to parameterize it.
For instance, I might want to set a different id each time.
So I do it like this:
{{vars = {id : 'main_access_input'} }}
{{include 'friend_selector.html'}}
{{vars = {} }}
And then parameterize my html like this:
<div class="friend_selector">
<div class="access_photos" users="[]"></div>
<input {{if vars['id']:}}id="{{=vars['id']}}"{{pass}}
name="access_input" class="access_input" size="30" type="text"
value="" />
</div>
Basically, I'm re-inventing a function call via the {{include}}
feature. Wouldn't it be awesome if this just happened automatically???
Like this:
{{include 'friend_selector.html' (id='main_access_input')}}
Would you like this feature? Does this sound hard to implement?
Appendix:
1. You can also do this I think with template inheritance, but that's
just complicated. Or you could define and call parameterized functions
in python, but editing embedded html in python strings is gross.
2. The (id='main_access_input') part would ideally be a full python-
style parameter list, supporting e.g. (a=1, b=3). This is simpler to
implement. But to support positional args, like (1,3,5, a=1), the html
blocks would need to declare their supported parameters. They could do
so with by including a "declare" snippet like this:
{{ declare (a, b, c, id=None): }}
<div class="friend_selector">
<div class="access_photos" users="[]"></div>
<input {{if id:}}id="{{=id}}"{{pass}}
name="access_input"
class="access_input" size="30" type="text" value="" />
</div>
