"Inline" includes

[HoldYourWaffle]

I'd love to see a way to define inline includes: reusable blocks of HTML that can be inserted at will without the need for a separate file.

It's perhaps best explained with an example (I used var as "declaration" tag for now, block is already used by reshape/layouts and I just couldn't think of anything better):

<var name="foo">
    <span style="red">Something</span>
    <span style="blue">interesting</span>
</var>


<h1>
    <include src="foo"></include>
</h1>

<p>
    Hello there!
</p>

<p>
    <include src="foo"></include>
</p>

<p>
    Isn't that fascinating?
</p>

Would result in:

<h1>
    <span style="red">Something</span>
    <span style="blue">interesting</span>
</h1>

<p>
    Hello there!
</p>

<p>
    <span style="red">Something</span>
    <span style="blue">interesting</span>
</p>

<p>
    Isn't that fascinating?
</p>

Advantages

• This allows you to put related things together (in the same file), making it easier to find referenced code
• No need for unnecessary (and cluttering) files

Disadvantages

• Templates can become more cluttered/complex (although that's at the designers own discretion)
• Maintenance I guess?

Things I haven't fully thought out yet

• How would this work with nested includes?
• Syntax, both for declaring and referencing

I'd be willing to take a shot at this myself but I haven't done any plugin development yet so I might need some pointers on what I should do and where I should look for information on how to do that.

[jescalan]

I think this is a perfect use case for you to build out a plugin and get more familiar with reshape's internals. It is 100% possible to build as a plugin, and in addition, you can remove all of the listed disadvantages, because as a plugin, anyone who is interested can use it, but nobody has to.

I would be more than happy to help if you have specific questions. Otherwise, you can see a detailed writeup on how plugins work here, a video of a talk I gave where I write a plugin live here, and a list of a bunch of other plugins that you can read the source for here. Hope that this helps!

[HoldYourWaffle]

you can remove all of the listed disadvantages,

Well maintenance would still be a "problem", but I guess that would be my burden then (although I'd be more than happy to maintain this feature if it was included in this module).

because as a plugin, anyone who is interested can use it, but nobody has to.

Nobody has to use it if it's in this plugin either

I think I'll take a shot at this somewhere next week, the documentation so far has been pretty good so I think it won't be that hard. Any suggestions for a tag name/inclusion syntax? I'm not sure var is the best name possible...

[jescalan]

Sure! Just as a note, I'd recommend making it a separate plugin, not part of this one. As far as naming, maybe define-include?

[HoldYourWaffle]

Hmmm that sounds good. Should using it be include-local then?

[jescalan]

sure, either way. you can make the keyword configurable if you want!