I'm currently building a API service that accepts Input in HTTP Requests, processes the information, uses a template engine (Currently Jade) to parse the Template files and then outputs in either HTML, PDF or a Image.
I would like to have this service not be bound to a Database, as I don't see a need for it. The service has one goal, accept input and output the result in the desired format.
Currently I can't decide on how to store and read my templates, it's a new world without a database....
Do I store them in a folder such as "templates" which I read each time I want a list of templates ? But have no idea how and if file locks will cause problems ?
Any suggestions ?
Have a look at Express.js it will allow you to set up a project with a good default directory structure. By default it stores Jade templates in 'views'. There will be no problems with file locking.
One other thing I would do is separate the API service from the view rendering. At the moment I use restify for pure REST services it is specifically geared toward that use case. So the workflow would roughly look as follows
'views' folder <--> Jade templates <--> Express <--> JSON data <--> REST API