echo/print functions

[oscarotero]

Hi, thanks for this nice library. 😃
It would be great to have a print/echo function like in php to output code inside a funcion. For example:

<ul>
<? items.forEach(function (item) {
    echo(`<li><a href="${item.url}">${item.title}</a></li>`);
}); ?>
</ul>

I don't know if this is possible and easy to implement, but it would be really useful.

[RyanZim]

@oscarotero I've thought about this myself, but never proposed it.

Adding it would almost certainly be a breaking change though, since it could create variable name collisions with existing templates.

FWIW, you can get something like what you're describing by calling __append('Some text') in your template. __append is an internal function, so there is a possibility this won't always work between versions. Also, calling this manually may throw off line numbers for errors (not sure about this).

@mde would need to make a decision on whether we will ever add official support for a print/echo function.

[oscarotero]

A solution to prevent the breaking change could be having an option to configure this. For example:

ejs.render(str, data, { appendFunction: 'echo'; });

By default this could be false (no function) or __append (if it's currently available), but can be renamed to print, echo or whatever.

[RyanZim]

@oscarotero That's a possible solution, in fact I kind of like it. @mde will have the final decision, though.

[mde]

I think this is a reasonable approach. It doesn't bloat the lib, and is opt-in. We would want to make sure it doesn't break the line count in our error handling. @oscarotero, would you like to put together a PR for this?

[oscarotero]

Here's the PR #248 🎉

[mde]

PR merged, thanks!