how to use dustjs-linkedin as client side templating?

I get the idea of server and client side templating, but dust.js confuses me a little bit.

In order to use dust.js for client side templating, you need three steps:

complie the template
load the template
render the template

Right?

But where do the templates come from? I saw two different methods:

 1. <script> template <script>
 2. <div> template </div>

... Both of them are in the DOM. Which is correct?

I also notice that you can load the template via ajax, so the template won't be seen in the DOM, but I don't know how to do that.

Also, I'm currently using jade as express view engine. Is it necessary to switch to dust.js? What is the advantage?

Solution

This is LinkedIn Dust JS wiki page that can answer your questions and has very good examples: http://linkedin.github.com/dustjs/

But to answer your questions here:

Yes you need to compile your dust template which becomes a JavaScript file that you can add to your page by <script> tag and then call dust.render method to render your template. Here is an example:

write following code in a template file and save it as sample.tl
```
<p>Hi {firstName} {lastName}</p>
```
compile sample.tl to sample.js by dustc sample.tl in command line or use dust.compile("your_template_code", "template_name") to compile the template and save the output in a JavaScript file (sample.js) or you use duster.js to watch and compile templates by nodejs: https://github.com/dmix/dusterjs
add sample.js in your html:
```
<script type="text/javascript" src="sample.js"></script>
```
this will also register your template to dust.cache.
in your JavaScript:
```
var your_json = {firstName:'James', lastName:'Smith'};

dust.render('sample', your_json, function(err, out){

    your_dom_element.innerHTML = out;

});
```
The result of above dust.render method will be <p>Hi James Smith</p>

So you need to pass 3 arguments to dust.render: dust.render(template_name, json, callback)