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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-30T01:15:41+00:00

I recent came across Javascript templates and have become quite intrigued. I am building

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I recent came across Javascript templates and have become quite intrigued.

I am building a large PHP application using the MVC pattern. Templating is handled by the rather awesome Twig.

I recently came across a javascript implementation of twig.

I have also read quite a bit about using javascipt template engines.

Now, in my application, the application generates a the full page for standard requests as fallback for users without javascript. For AJAX requests, it can generate the content part of the page (no <head>, <body> etc).

The ajax response object is currently just a the rendered HTML content, which is then inserted into DOM.

Should I instead return a response object containing a compiled javascript template and the objects to be inserted into the template? What are the benefits of doing that?

From the posts I have read, the javascript templates were only small snippets representing a small part of a page, for example displaying a comment on a blog post during the instant that the user has submitted it.

Are javascript templates only useful for inserting these sort of small “pieces” in a page?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Yes

    A recent project I was on got “client-side template fever” and we used the dang things for every single template.

    With every template library I’ve used (which is two or three), the error messages you get are not very good. If you have a huge template that operates on a fair amount of data, you’ll quickly find the u.foo is null or not an object error message increasingly frustrating.

    The best-practices I’ve settled on is:

    • Return a full HTML snippet (from the server) if it’s a template that is seldom loaded. If you are only loading that HTML once on a page, then you might as well send it down populated right? This also encourages you to keep your logic up on the server, where it probably belongs.
    • Use client-side templates for small, repeated templates. Your blog comment example is probably a good one. I’ve found the most success when my client-side templates are pretty small (< 10 lines)
    • Use a logic-less template engine. The more logic allowable in a template, the harder they are to read/maintain. Plus, some of that logic should probably be in your business layer, not down in some JavaScript template. In other words, they force you to separate your presentation from your logic (which is good).

    PS: It is cool that both your client and server-side templates could use the same templating engine. This will make developers on your project much more productive.

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