#dust.js

Dust.js is a nice template engine for Node.js, but its development has been idle for almost a year.

Now I'm trying to test it on Express with Node.js 0.6.x, and the easiest way turns out to be using consolidate.js.

Consolidate.js only support express.js 3.0.xbranch, which is not onnpm` yet, so we need to install the CLI from master branch on github

$ npm install -g https://github.com/visionmedia/express/tarball/master

Then create a default Express app named test:

$ express -s -e test && cd test

Now we need to install express module also from masterbranch on github:

$ npm install https://github.com/visionmedia/express/tarball/master

Then do regular npm install to install dependencies.

Consolidate.js author has not pushed dust.js support to npm, so we need to install from master branch.

$ npm install https://github.com/visionmedia/consolidate.js/tarball/master

Then install dust.js

$ npm install dust

There are a few changes you need to do before being able to run the app. See the below app.js for changes (old ones are commented out).

var express = require('express') , routes = require('./routes') , http = require('http') , fs = require('fs') , path = require('path') , cons = require('consolidate'); var app = express(); // assign dust engine to .dust files app.engine('dust', cons.dust); app.configure(function(){ app.set('view engine', 'dust'); app.set('views', __dirname + '/views'); app.use(express.favicon()); app.use(express.logger('dev')); //app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public')); app.use(express.static(__dirname + '/public', {redirect: false})); app.use(express.bodyParser()); app.use(express.methodOverride()); app.use(express.cookieParser('your secret here')); app.use(express.session()); app.use(app.router); }); app.configure('development', function(){ app.use(express.errorHandler()); }); //app.get('/', routes.index); app.get('/', function(req, res){ res.render('index', { title: 'Testing out dust.js server-side rendering' }); }); http.createServer(app).listen(3000); console.log("Express server listening on port 3000");

You also need to modify Dust to add support for Node 0.6.x by modifying node_modules\dust\lib\server.js as following:

- Script = process.binding('evals').Script; + Script = require("vm"); - require.paths.unshift(path.join(__dirname, '..'));