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Haml v2.2.0 Release Notes

  • Tagged on GitHub.

    Haml 2.2 adds several new features to the language, 🛠 fixes several bugs, and dramatically improves performance (particularly when running with {file:HAML_REFERENCE.md#ugly-option :ugly} enabled).

    Syntax Changes

    💅 HTML-Style Attribute Syntax

    Haml 2.2 introduces a new syntax for attributes based on the HTML syntax. For example:

    %a(href="http://haml.info" title="Haml's so cool!")
  %img(src="/images/haml.png" alt="Haml")

    There are two main reasons for this. 💅 First, the hash-style syntax is very Ruby-specific. There are now Haml implementations in many languages, each of which has its own syntax for hashes (or dicts or associative arrays or whatever they're called). The HTML syntax will be adopted by all of them, so you can feel comfortable using Haml in whichever language you need.

    💅 Second, the hash-style syntax is quite verbose. %img{:src => "/images/haml.png", :alt => "Haml"} is eight characters longer than %img(src="/images/haml.png" alt="Haml"). Haml's supposed to be about writing templates quickly and easily; 💅 HTML-style attributes should help out a lot with that.

    💎 Ruby variables can be used as attribute values by omitting quotes. Local variables or instance variables can be used. For example:

    %a(title=@title href=href) Stuff

    This is the same as:

    %a{:title => @title, :href => href} Stuff

    Because there are no commas separating attributes, more complicated expressions aren't allowed. You can use #{} interpolation to insert complicated expressions 💅 in a HTML-style attribute, though:

    %span(class="widget_#{@widget.number}")

    Multiline Attributes

    In general, Haml tries to keep individual elements on a single line. There is a multiline syntax for overflowing onto further lines, but it's intentionally awkward to use to encourage shorter lines.

    However, there is one case where overflow is reasonable: attributes. Often a tag will simply have a lot of attributes, and in this case it makes sense to allow overflow. You can now stretch an attribute hash across multiple lines:

    %script{:type => "text/javascript",
        :src  => "javascripts/script_#{2 + 7}"}

    💅 This also works for HTML-style attributes:

        %script(type="text/javascript"
        src="javascripts/script_#{2 + 7}")

    💅 Note that for hash-style attributes, the newlines must come after commas.

    Universal interpolation

    💎 In Haml 2.0, you could use == to interpolate Ruby code within a line of text using #{}. In Haml 2.2, the == is unnecessary; #{} can be used in any text. For example:

    %p This is a really cool #{h what_is_this}!
But is it a #{h what_isnt_this}?

    In addition, to {file:HAML_REFERENCE.md#escaping_html escape} or {file:HAML_REFERENCE.md#unescaping_html unescape} the interpolated code, you can just add & or !, respectively, to the beginning of the line:

    %p& This is a really cool #{what_is_this}!
& But is it a #{what_isnt_this}?

    Flexible indentation

    Haml has traditionally required its users to use two spaces of indentation. 💅 This is the universal Ruby style, and still highly recommended. However, Haml now allows any number of spaces or even tabs for indentation, provided:

    • Tabs and spaces are not mixed
    • The indentation is consistent within a given document

    🆕 New Options

    :ugly

    The :ugly option is not technically new; it was introduced in Haml 2.0 to make rendering deeply nested templates less painful. However, it's been greatly empowered in Haml 2.2. 🐎 It now does all sorts of performance optimizations that couldn't be done before, 🐎 and its use increases Haml's performance dramatically. 0️⃣ It's enabled by default in production in Rails, and it's highly recommended for production environments in other frameworks.

    :encoding {#encoding-option}

    This option specifies the encoding of the Haml template 0️⃣ when running under Ruby 1.9. It defaults to Encoding.default_internal or "utf-8". This is useful for making sure that you don't get weird encoding errors when dealing with non-ASCII input data.

    🗄 Deprecations

    Haml::Helpers#puts

    🗄 This helper is being deprecated for the obvious reason that it conflicts with the Kernel#puts method. I'm ashamed I ever chose this name. 👉 Use haml_concat instead and spare me the embarrassment.

    = haml_tag

    A lot of people accidentally use "= haml_tag". This has always been wrong; haml_tag outputs directly to the template, and so should be used as "- haml_tag". Now it raises an error when you use =.

    Compatibility

    🚅 Rails

    🚅 Haml 2.2 is fully compatible with Rails, ✅ from 2.0.6 to the latest revision of edge, 783db25.

    💎 Ruby 1.9

    💎 Haml 2.2 is also fully compatible with Ruby 1.9. 💅 It supports Ruby 1.9-style attribute hashes, and handles encoding-related issues 👀 (see the :encoding option).

    Filters

    :markdown

    There are numerous improvements to the Markdown filter. No longer will Haml attempt to use RedCloth's inferior Markdown implementation. Instead, it will look for all major Markdown implementations: RDiscount, RPeg-Markdown, 💎 Maruku, and BlueCloth.

    :cdata

    There is now a :cdata filter for wrapping text in CDATA tags.

    :sass

    🔌 The :sass filter now uses options set in Sass::Plugin, if they're available.

    Executables

    haml

    The haml executable now takes -r and -I flags 💎 that act just like the same flags for the ruby executable. This allows users to load helper files when using Haml 💻 from the command line.

    It also takes a --debug flag that causes it to spit out 💎 the Ruby code that Haml generates from the template. This is more for my benefit than anything, but you may find it interesting.

    html2haml

    The html2haml executable has undergone significant improvements. 🛠 Many of these are bugfixes, but there are also a few features. For one, it now understands CDATA tags and autodetects ERB files. In addition, a line containing just "- end" is now a Haml error; 📜 since it's not possible for html2haml to properly parse all Ruby blocks, 🚦 this acts as a signal for the author that there are blocks to be dealt with.

    Miscellaneous

    XHTML Mobile DTD

    👍 Haml 2.2 supports a DTD for XHTML Mobile: !!! Mobile.

    YARD

    📚 All the documentation for Haml 2.2, including this changelog, 🚚 has been moved to YARD. 📚 YARD is an excellent documentation system, 📚 and allows us to write our documentation in Maruku, which is also excellent.