I really love Haml.

In fact, I really, absolutely, admittedly, undoubtedly, beyond a doubt, in actuality, love Haml. Does that sound obsessive to you? It should, because that will tell you how much I adore Haml. I’d probably sleep with haml over Angelina Jolie, given the chance anyway.

Haml is poetry, it’s “markup haiku”.

Need proof? Okay, look how sexy this is, coming from a Rails application.

!!!
%html
  %head
    %title= "Film Fest :: "+controller.controller_name.capitalize
    = stylesheet_link_tag 'screen'
    = javascript_include_tag 'ufo'
  %body
    #container
      #banner
        %h1 Podcast Film Festival
      #left
        %h2 Menu
        %ul
          - if logged_in?
            %li= link_to "My Account", edit_user_url(current_user)
            %li= link_to "Films", categories_url
            %li= link_to "Messages", view_messages_for_user_url({:user_id => "#{current_user.id}"})
            %li= link_to "My Blog", view_blog_for_user_url({:user_id => "#{current_user.id}"})
            %li= link_to "Log out", logout_url
          %li Invite Friends
          %li= link_to "Users", users_url
          - unless logged_in?
            %li
              = link_to "Log In", new_session_url
          - if is_admin?
            %h3 Logged in as an admin
            %p administration privileges granted
            %li= link_to "Pages", pages_url
            %li= link_to "Approve Assets", assets_url
      #content
        = yield
        - unless flash[:notice].blank?
          #flash
            = flash[:notice]
      #footer
        %h1 In sexy code we trust

Does that not look sexy to you? I mean, c’mon 36 lines of code for a complete layout page? Auto closing tags? Auto closing conditionals? The absolute simplicity of the code? For more readability you can split the lines up a bit, but I personally like to compact everything.

To call an id of a div you simply just do #(id_name), woah, it’s like I’m extracting it from css. I love it!
To call a class of a div you simply just do .(class_name), woah x2, it’s like I’m extracting it from css. I freaking love it!
%tags automatically close on themselves, providing valid code. Did I say woah already? How about miraculous! I adore it!

Did I mention it’s 16x faster than markaby? Rock on!

HAML provides you with an proper structure of your elements, why? Because of the way you indent, you’re forced to code properly. There are just so many great things, I’m so ecstatic that I can’t type my ideas properly. It’s also changed a lot of ways that I code, for e.g back in the day I used to have a lot of Ruby in my rhtml, well you’re usually supposed to put those in a helper. Well thanks to Haml is practically forces you to, you’ll know why when you start to use it. It’s definitely a similar feeling from using basic rails testing, then going to rspec/bdd.

Seriously just give it a shot, see how good it feels to instantly have your lines of code be reduced more than fifty percent, just on the first try.

For more documentation and information, take a look at the Haml website.

Next time, I’ll touch base on Haml’s sister, sass.

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