ZEzepolen·Jul 15, 2017
I've done this many years ago with https://github.com/wkral/jinja2js
It works - but there are gotchas:
1. You can't depend on useful pythonisms/javascriptisms such as
{{thing or ""}} vs {{thing || ""}
2. Template filter code still has to be duplicated in both languages - i18n such as {{_('String')}} for example - which sort of makes sense - but then you have to do the same for some other, really trivial, filters.
3. Testing becomes annoying because a template can work in one, and not the other - you have to test both.
4. You don't get the newer html diff style virtual dom rendering which can cause issues with stuff like select boxes. You end up with special case code to handle that, which is more of a hassle.
The conclusions from it all were:
a) You do save time over doing it once in python, once in js
b) You don't save time over doing
Read the rest
it all in js - especially if you use a newer functional style js template framework (react/vue/polymer)
c) You can still get the best of both worlds by hooking up your templates in js to be rendered by your backend - eg like https://github.com/reactjs/react-rails does.
In the end for my next project I decided to do an api for the backend in python and the website/frontend in react with SSR, and am really thrilled with the results - very maintainable, testable and simple overall.