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0 pointsweavejester15y ago0 comments

The main advantage of writing HTML using a tool like Hiccup is that you can factor out repeated sections of markup into functions.

For example, one might write a page like:

  (defn user-settings [user]
    (settings-for [user]
      (breadcrumbs (link home) (link settings))
      (text-field :login)
      (text-field :email)))

And the functions used would take care of generating the page, layout, form, fields, error notices, flash messages, CSRF protection and so forth. By the time you've finished with all that, those 4 lines of Clojure will be 50 lines of HTML.

Hiccup tends to lend itself toward user interfaces that are uniform and predictable, with repeatable elements. Think Facebook or Github, for instance.

0 pointsweavejester15y ago0 comments

The main advantage of writing HTML using a tool like Hiccup is that you can factor out repeated sections of markup into functions.

For example, one might write a page like:

  (defn user-settings [user]
    (settings-for [user]
      (breadcrumbs (link home) (link settings))
      (text-field :login)
      (text-field :email)))

Hiccup tends to lend itself toward user interfaces that are uniform and predictable, with repeatable elements. Think Facebook or Github, for instance.

0 comments

4 comments · 1 top-level

swannodette15y ago· 3 in thread

I don't see how this any different from what Enlive provides. Enlive templates/snippets create functions which generate HTML. In anycase, using Hiccup with Enlive seems to combine the best of both worlds.

weavejesterOP15y ago

HTML is a markup language, rather than a Turing Complete programming language, so there's a lot of redundancy in a HTML file that could be avoided in a programming language.

You can get around this in Enlive and other HTML-based templating methods by taking a hybrid approach. The layout HTML is written by a designer, but all the tedious repeatable elements are written by programmers in helper functions, or factored out into dozens of smaller templates.

I'm not sure I like this approach, as it (a) glues together several different methods for generating HTML, (b) encourages people to write the HTML around the page design, rather than treating HTML as purely semantic markup.

I admit to being something of a purist when it comes to HTML. I'd prefer to keep the style and design of the page out of my HTML as much as possible; idiomatic HTML should be semantic markup, whilst the design of the page should be defined in CSS.

swannodette15y ago

I don't see anything in Enlive which is at odds with your viewpoint.

1 more reply

dougws15y ago

Using them together does seem ideal, but it turns out it is pretty inefficient in practice: http://groups.google.com/group/enlive-clj/browse_thread/thre...

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