Question

I want to be able to use nodejs with jquery without having to execute an npm install as I want to use jquery strictly on the client side. I know this is not possible with the Jade templating engine as its syntax is completely different, but is it possible with some other templating engine? I would prefer not to have a bunch of HTML to haml just to make nodejs happy.

Answer 1

It is certainly possible to use jQuery or any other JavaScript client-side library with Jade. You’ll need to figure out the syntax to include a JavaScript file and JavaScript code with whatever engine you use. With Jade you can use script() to include an external file (like the jQuery library) and then script to code your specific calls. Take a look at the Jade documentation here: https://github.com/visionmedia/jade#readme

Below is an example of a Jade file that (1) includes jQuery and then (2) updates an HTML element (“message”) through jQuery:

doctype 5
html
  head
    title= title
    link(rel='stylesheet', href='/stylesheets/style.css')
    script(src='http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.8.1.js')
  body
    h1= title
    p#container Welcome to #{title}
    p#message (to be filled in)
    script
      alert('hello world');
      $("#message").html("message set through jquery")