Enhance Your HTMX and Bun Stack with Pug: A JavaScript Templating Engine for Simplified DOM Interactions
In the first installment of this series, we established a robust web development stack and built a basic application using Bun, HTMX, Elysia, and MongoDB. This article continues to expand on our stack by refining the data access layer of our example application and introducing Pug, a JavaScript templating engine that will streamline DOM interactions and enhance the overall development experience.
Enhancing the Example Application
Our current example application features a simple form and a table. Users can enter quotes along with their authors into the form, which then allows for searching and displaying the quotes in the table. To give the interface a modern look and feel, we’ve added some CSS enhancements. The updated front-end now uses HTMX to manage form submissions and dynamically load data into the table. When a user submits a quote, HTMX handles the request and updates the list of quotes automatically. Similarly, the “Load Data” button retrieves and displays all quotes with the help of HTMX.
Refining the Backend
We’ve also made improvements to the backend by streamlining the database connectivity. The updated backend setup ensures that the database connection is properly managed. An asynchronous function establishes the connection to the MongoDB database and returns the necessary client and collection objects. This approach allows the application to interact with the database efficiently. Additionally, another function is responsible for closing the database connection when it is no longer needed, ensuring proper resource management.
Introducing Pug Templating
In this part, we will integrate Pug into our stack. Pug is a popular JavaScript templating engine that simplifies the generation of dynamic HTML content. It transforms HTML templates into JavaScript functions, making it easier to create and manage complex HTML structures. By incorporating Pug, we will enhance our ability to generate dynamic content efficiently and maintain clean, readable code.
Conclusion
With these updates, our application is better equipped to handle both data management and presentation. The refinements to our data access layer, combined with the addition of Pug for templating, improve both the backend and frontend of our stack. In the next part of this series, we will explore more advanced HTMX interactions and further leverage Pug’s features to enhance our development workflow.