Defining a HTML template to append using jQuery

Question

I have got an array which I am looping through. Every time a condition is true, I want to append a copy of the HTML code below to a container element with some values.

Where can I put this HTML to re-use in a smart way?

<a href="#" class="list-group-item">
    <div class="image">
         <img src="" />
    </div>
    <p class="list-group-item-text"></p>
</a>

jQuery

$('.search').keyup(function() {
    $('.list-items').html(null);

    $.each(items, function(index) {
        // APPENDING CODE HERE
    });
});

Answer 1

You could decide to make use of a templating engine in your project, such as:

• mustache
• underscore.js
• handlebars

If you don't want to include another library, John Resig offers a jQuery solution, similar to the one below.

---

Browsers and screen readers ignore unrecognized script types:

<script id="hidden-template" type="text/x-custom-template">
    <tr>
        <td>Foo</td>
        <td>Bar</td>
    <tr>
</script>

Using jQuery, adding rows based on the template would resemble:

var template = $('#hidden-template').html();

$('button.addRow').click(function() {
    $('#targetTable').append(template);
});