ENML ( let's pronounce it enamel ) is a simple, extensible Domain Specific Markup Language toolkit for creating customized DSML. I wrote it for a project that required some custom display tags to augment a Markdown driven backend and to learn about simple LR recursive-decent parsing.

1. create dsl

    dsl = new ENML.grammar('myDSL');
   

2. define tags

    dsl.define('foo')
   	   .as('<div class="foo">%TC</div>');
   

3. parse ENML

    dsl.parse('Hello [foo: World!]'); // --> Hello <div class="foo">World!</div>
   

Defining tags

ENML tags are defined through a stateful, chainable interface

dsl.define('foo')
   .as('<div class="foo">%TC</div>');

they can have attributes with defaults

dsl.define('foo')
   .plus({ color: '#f00' })
   .as('<div class="foo" style="color:%COLOR">%TC</div>');

there is a cssProxy convenience method for simple HTML tags

dsl.define('foo')
   .as('<div class="foo">%TC</div>');
// is the same as
dsl.define('foo')
   .as.cssProxy('div');

or be functional ( functional tags are passed a context object when parsing )

dsl.define('fig')
   .plus({ image_number: 1 })
   .as(function( context, args ){
   		return "<div class='fig'><img src='"+context.images[args.image_number-1]+"' />"+args.tc+"</div>";
   	});

you can also define ENML tags with an object

dsl.define({
    foo: '<div class="foo">%TC</div>'
  , chapter: {
      plus: { title: '' }
    , as: '<section class="chapter"><header><h1>%TITLE</h1></header><p>%TC</p></section>'
  }
});

Parsing ENML

Parse text written in your dsl with dsl.parse( input ). If you have functional templates, pass the context to the parser:

var context = { images: ['/images/athome.jpg', '/images/atwork.jpg', '/images/fixing.jpg' ] };
dsl.parse('Lorem ipsum... [fig: image_number="3" Johnathan fixing his computer. ]', context);
// --> Lorem ipsum... <div class="fig"><img src="/images/fixing.jpg" />Johnathan fixing his computer.</div>

All flavors of ENML support footnote style linking

This is a [1: link]

[1: http://www.example.com ]

And escaping of [] characters:

You can include [/] brackets by [/ escaping them ]

If you like, you can set up a customized syntax:

dsl = new ENML.grammar('myDSL', { open:    /^\s*%%%-/,
                                  closed:  /^\s*-%%%/,
                                  escaped: /^\s*%%%-\s*\//,
                                  text:    /(^\s*[^-%])/  });

dsl.define('foo').as.cssProxy('div');

dsl.parse('Hello %%%-foo:World!-%%%'); // --> Hello <div class="foo">World!</div>

More Info

The enml.js source code is commented in a modified jsDoc format and should be easy to follow. For more information on the API specifics, have a look through the Jasmine specs tests/spec/EnmlSpec.js. A formal definition of the ENML grammar in Bakaus Backus–Naur Form is available in docs/enml_grammar.bnf.