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How to Create Partials Using EJS for Reusable Code 🚀

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How to Create Partials Using EJS for Reusable Code 🚀

In the realm of web development, code reusability is a cornerstone of efficient and maintainable projects. Embedded JavaScript Templates (EJS) is a popular templating engine that empowers developers with the ability to create dynamic and interactive web pages. One of the key features of EJS is its support for partials, which allows you to break down your templates into smaller, reusable components, promoting modularity and streamlining the development process.

What are Partials in EJS?

Partials in EJS are essentially snippets of HTML code that can be included in your main EJS templates. They are like mini-templates that encapsulate specific sections of your web page, such as headers, footers, navigation bars, or common form elements. By defining these sections as partials, you eliminate the need to repeat the same code across multiple templates, ensuring consistency and reducing redundancy.

Why Use Partials?

There are several compelling reasons to embrace partials in your EJS projects:

Code Reusability:
The most significant benefit of partials is the ability to reuse the same code snippets across different templates. This reduces the overall codebase and simplifies maintenance.
Modularization:
Partials promote modularity by breaking down your templates into smaller, manageable units, making them easier to understand and modify.
Consistency:
Partials help maintain consistency across your website by ensuring that common elements, like headers and footers, are rendered identically on every page.
Reduced Development Time:
By reusing existing partials, you save time and effort during development, as you don't have to write the same code repeatedly.
Improved Maintainability:
When you need to make changes to a common element, you only need to modify the corresponding partial, ensuring that the change is reflected across all templates that include that partial.

Creating and Using Partials in EJS

Let's dive into the practical aspects of creating and utilizing partials in EJS. We'll use a simple example to illustrate the concepts.

1. Creating a Partial

Imagine we want to create a partial for a header section that will be used across multiple pages. Here's how you can create a file named header.ejs:

  <!DOCTYPE html>
  <html lang="en">
   <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8"/>
    <meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" name="viewport"/>
    <title>
     &lt;%= title %&gt;
    </title>
   </head>
   <body>
    <header>
     <h1>
      My Website
     </h1>
    </header>
   </body>
  </html>

2. Including the Partial in a Main Template

Now, let's create a main template named index.ejs and include the header.ejs partial:

&lt;%- include('./header.ejs', {title: 'Home'}) %&gt;
  <main>
   <h2>
    Welcome to My Website!
   </h2>
   <p>
    This is the homepage.
   </p>
  </main>

3. Rendering the Template

You can use your favorite Node.js web framework, such as Express, to render the index.ejs template:

const express = require('express');
const app = express();

app.set('view engine', 'ejs');

app.get('/', (req, res) =&gt; {
    res.render('index');
});

app.listen(3000, () =&gt; {
    console.log('Server listening on port 3000');
});

This code snippet defines a route that renders the index.ejs template when a user visits the root URL. The res.render() method takes the template name as the first argument and an optional object with data to be passed to the template as the second argument.

4. Output

When you run this code and access the root URL in your browser, you'll see the following output:

Passing Data to Partials

You can pass data from your main template to your partials using the second argument of the include function. In the index.ejs example, we passed the title variable to the header.ejs partial, which was then used to set the title of the HTML document.

&lt;%- include('./header.ejs', {title: 'Home'}) %&gt;

This allows you to dynamically control the content of your partials based on the context of the main template.

Nested Partials

EJS also allows you to nest partials within other partials, enabling you to create hierarchical structures of reusable components. For instance, you could create a footer.ejs partial that includes another partial for copyright information.

&lt;%- include('./footer.ejs') %&gt;

&lt;%- include('./copyright.ejs') %&gt;

Best Practices for Using Partials

To ensure your EJS partials are effective and maintainable, follow these best practices:

Keep Partials Small and Focused:

Each partial should serve a specific purpose and be relatively compact. This makes them easier to understand and modify.
Use Meaningful Names:

Choose descriptive names for your partials to clearly indicate their functionality. For example, header.ejs, footer.ejs, nav-menu.ejs, etc.
Organize Partials:

Create a dedicated folder for your partials to keep your project organized and avoid clutter in your main template directory.
Avoid Redundancy:

Make sure your partials don't contain repeated code. If you find yourself repeating code across multiple partials, consider creating a more general partial that can be reused by all of them.
Use Data Passing Effectively:

Pass necessary data to your partials to ensure their flexibility and dynamic content generation.

Conclusion

EJS partials are a powerful tool for building modular and maintainable web applications. By breaking down your templates into reusable components, you can significantly enhance code reusability, improve organization, and streamline the development process. As you gain experience with EJS, you'll discover that partials become an indispensable part of your templating workflow, enabling you to create more efficient and scalable web projects.