Guard::Handlebars compiles your Handlebars automatically when files are modified.

Tested on MRI Ruby 1.8.7, 1.9.2 and the latest versions of JRuby & Rubinius.

Please be sure to have Guard installed before continue.

Install the gem:

gem install guard-handlebars

Add it to your Gemfile, preferably inside the development group:

gem 'guard-handlebars'

Add guard definition to your Guardfile by running this command:

guard init handlebars

Please read the Guard usage documentation.

Guard::Handlebars can be adapted to all kind of projects. Please read the Guard documentation for more information about the Guardfile DSL.

In addition to the standard configuration, this Guard has a short notation for configure projects with a single input a output directory. This notation creates a watcher from the :input parameter that matches all Handlebars files under the given directory and you don't have to specify a watch regular expression.

guard 'handlebars', :input => 'handlebars', :output => 'javascripts'

guard 'handlebars', :input => 'app/views', :output => 'public/javascripts/compiled'

There following options can be passed to Guard::Handlebars:

:input => 'handlebars'              # Relative path to the input directory, default: nil
:output => 'javascripts'            # Relative path to the output directory, default: nil
:bare => true                       # Compile without the top-level function wrapper, default: false
:shallow => true                    # Do not create nested output directories, default: false
:hide_success => true               # Disable successful compilation messages, default: false

The guard detects by default nested directories and creates these within the output directory. The detection is based on the match of the watch regular expression:

A file

/app/views/mycontroller/myview.handlebars

that has been detected by the watch

watch(%r{app/views/(.+\.handlebars)})

with an output directory of

:output => 'public/javascripts/compiled'

will be compiled to

public/javascripts/compiled/mycontroller/myview.js

Note the parenthesis around the .+\.handlebars. This enables Guard::Handlebars to place the full path that was matched inside the parenthesis into the proper output directory.

This behavior can be switched off by passing the option :shallow => true to the guard, so that all JavaScripts will be compiled directly to the output directory.

The Guard short notation

guard 'handlebars', :input => 'app/views', :output => 'public/javascripts/compiled'

will be internally converted into the standard notation by adding (.+\.handlebars) to the input option string and create a Watcher that is equivalent to:

guard 'handlebars', :output => 'public/javascripts/compiled' do
  watch(%r{app/views/(.+\.handlebars)})
end

To add a second source directory that will be compiled to the same output directory, just add another watcher:

guard 'handlebars', :input => 'app/views', :output => 'public/javascripts/compiled' do
  watch(%r{lib/views/(.+\.handlebars)})
end

which is equivalent to:

guard 'handlebars', :output => 'public/javascripts/compiled' do
  watch(%r{app/views/(.+\.handlebars)})
  watch(%r{lib/handlebars/(.+\.handlebars)})
end

• Source hosted at GitHub
• Report issues/Questions/Feature requests on GitHub Issues

Pull requests are very welcome! Make sure your patches are well tested.

I took the Guard::CoffeeScript code base and renamed stuff as a first pass. It helped me to learn Guard, and was pretty much what I wanted to be doing. I love open source software!!

The Guard Team for giving us such a nice pice of software that is so easy to extend, one has to make a plugin for it!

All the authors of the numerous Guards available for making the Guard ecosystem so much growing and comprehensive.

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2011 Adam Williams Portions Copyright (c) 2010 - 2011 Michael Kessler

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.