Alternatives to ERB - Haml and Markdown (also Slim)

We are going to try out Haml as an alternative templating engine. Haml is a beautiful, simple HTML preprocessor. Haml compiles directly to HTML, there’s a one to one mapping.

Haml has:

1. Semantic indentation. Close tags are not necessary.
2. Ruby style hashes for attributes.

Exercise

1. We are going to convert one of our views into Haml. Pick one at random from your blog, you could also choose a partial.
2. Add gem ‘haml’ to your Gemfile. bundle and restart your server.
3. Now check out the Haml documentation here: http://haml.info/
4. Manually convert your view to basic Haml

Exercise - Filters

We are going to use a markdown filter to write text in Markdown. Markdown is a simple text preprocessing language.

1. Check out filters in the Haml docs
2. Add a markdown filter to your template
3. Now add a block of text. 2 newlines makea paragraph. A # makes an h1. ## makes an h2.

Writing text blocks in markdown can really save you time and make your ideas flow more clearly.