You should see this blog post by John Resiq: JavaScript Micro-Templating
It has a simple micro-templating code you can re-use. It goes like this:
// Simple JavaScript Templating
// John Resig - http://ejohn.org/ - MIT Licensed
(function(){
var cache = {};
this.tmpl = function tmpl(str, data){
// Figure out if we're getting a template, or if we need to
// load the template - and be sure to cache the result.
var fn = !/\W/.test(str) ?
cache[str] = cache[str] ||
tmpl(document.getElementById(str).innerHTML) :
// Generate a reusable function that will serve as a template
// generator (and which will be cached).
new Function("obj",
"var p=[],print=function(){p.push.apply(p,arguments);};" +
// Introduce the data as local variables using with(){}
"with(obj){p.push('" +
// Convert the template into pure JavaScript
str
.replace(/[\r\t\n]/g, " ")
.split("<%").join("\t")
.replace(/((^|%>)[^\t]*)'/g, "$1\r")
.replace(/\t=(.*?)%>/g, "',$1,'")
.split("\t").join("');")
.split("%>").join("p.push('")
.split("\r").join("\\'")
+ "');}return p.join('');");
// Provide some basic currying to the user
return data ? fn( data ) : fn;
};
})();
So you template would be in the markup:
<script type="text/html" id="item_tmpl">
<div id="<%=id%>" class="<%=(i % 2 == 1 ? " even" : "")%>">
<div class="grid_1 alpha right">
<img class="righted" src="<%=profile_image_url%>"/>
</div>
<div class="grid_6 omega contents">
<p><b><a href="/<%=from_user%>"><%=from_user%></a>:</b> <%=text%></p>
</div>
</div>
</script>
To use it:
var results = document.getElementById("results");
results.innerHTML = tmpl("item_tmpl", dataObject);
To be clear - the above example was taken from the blog post and is not my code. Follow the link for more info.