Format of EJS and JST template files in rails-backbone gem

Question

I am using the rails-backbone gem ( https://github.com/codebrew/backbone-rails ). For rendering HTML, it uses some kind of javascript templates, whose name I cannot tell even after a few hours of search.

For example, it generates such a file for the view template:

# company.jst.ejs
<td><%= name %></td>
<td><%= tid %></td>

<td><a href="#/<%= _id %>">Show</td>
<td><a href="#/<%= _id %>/edit">Edit</td>
<td><a href="#/<%= _id %>/destroy" class="destroy">Destroy</a></td>

My questions are: what is .jst format? And in Rails 3.1, what library processes it? Same question for the .ejs extension. And what's the name of this template engine? Underscore?

Answer 1

Rails processes EJS templates with ejs gem which is a port of underscore.js's _.template function to Ruby. Output of that is a javascript function which in turn will produce the html when run in the browser.

• .ejs – embedded javascript
• .jst – javascript template

Here's recent article which includes also description of backbone-rails :

• Where does my javascript code go? Backbone, JST and the Rails 3.1 asset pipeline

Answer 2

A very good reference to what all this is about is here:-

http://www.bigjason.com/blog/precompiled-javascript-templates-rails-3-1