/*
<--- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----
    
    Blog Entry:
    Creating jQuery Templates Plug-in Using Textarea Elements (Thanks Kurt Bonnet)
    
    Code Snippet:
    2
    
    Author:
    Ben Nadel / Kinky Solutions
    
    Link:
    http://www.bennadel.com/index.cfm?dax=blog:1393.view
    
    Date Posted:
    Nov 10, 2008 at 9:06 AM
    
---- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --->
*/

// Define the jQuery Template plugin. This takes a textarea
// value and converts it into an jQuery DOM elements (outside
// of the current DOM) and returns it. It takes only one
// argument: the name-value pairs of the values to replace
// into the template.
jQuery.extend({template:function (strHTML, objValues) {
 
    // This will be our index variable for looping over the
    // values that were passed in.
    var strKey = "";
 
    // Check to make sure we have a value string. If this is
    // not the right kind of jQuery stack, the HTML string will
    // be null.
    if (strHTML) {
 
        // Now that we have the proper value, we have to
        // replace in the mapped values. Loop over each
        // value that was passed in.
        for (strKey in objValues) {
 
            // Escape all the special values in the key so that
            // it can be used in a regular expression.
            strSafeKey = strKey.replace(new RegExp("([""[""]"".""+""*""{""}""("")""$""?""-])", "gi"), """$1");
 
            // Replace the value.
            strHTML = strHTML.replace(new RegExp("""{" + strSafeKey + """}", "gi"), objValues[strKey]);
        }
 
        // At this point, our HTML will have fully replaced
        // values. Now, let's convert it into a jQuery DOM
        // element and return it.
        return (jQuery(strHTML));
    } else {
 
        // Return empty jQuery stack.
        return (jQuery([]));
    }
}});