It's fairly trivial to write server side code to process the jQuery templates.
Here is some very basic vb.net code I have created that will return the result of a jquery template string to an array of any objects. Currently it only does the replacement of data values
Public Shared Function RenderTemplate(template As String, list As Array) As String
Dim myRegexOptions As RegexOptions = RegexOptions.Multiline
Dim myRegex As New Regex(strRegex, myRegexOptions)
Dim splits = myRegex.Split(template)
Dim matches = myRegex.Matches(template)
Dim i As Integer = 0
Dim swap As Boolean = False
Dim str As New StringBuilder
For Each item In list
swap = False
For i = 0 To splits.Length - 1
If swap Then
str.Append(CallByName(item, splits(i), CallType.Get, Nothing))
Else
str.Append(splits(i))
End If
swap = Not swap
Next
Next
Return str.ToString
End Function
So if I sent in the following...
Dim strTargetString As String = "<p><a href='${Link}'>${Name}</a></p>"
Dim data As New Generic.List(Of TestClass)
data.Add(New TestClass With {.Link = "http://stackoverflow.com", .Name = "First Object"})
data.Add(New TestClass With {.Link = "http://stackexchange.com", .Name = "Second Object"})
Return Render(strTargetString, data.ToArray)
It would output it as a string
<p><a href='http://stackoverflow.com'>First Object</a></p>
<p><a href='http://stackexchange.com'>Second Object</a></p>
This will work alot faster than spawning up a fake browser object on the server, and running the whole jQuery library just to replace a few tags.
