Is it considered bad practice to use HTML in Jade?
Background
Actually jade/pug syntax allows plain HTML (or any other plain text) through the use of 3 syntaxes, as you can see in the reference on the project's site.
dot syntax (also known as "Block in a Tag")
ul. <li><a href="#book-a">Book A</a></li> <li><a href="#book-b">Book B</a></li>
pipe syntax (also known as "Piped Text")
ul | <li><a href="#book-a">Book A</a></li> | <li><a href="#book-b">Book B</a></li>
tag syntax (also know as "Inline in a Tag"), "Simply place some content after the tag", can also do the trick
ul li <a href="#book-a">Book A</a>
which will render
<ul><li><a href="#book-a">Book A</a></li></ul>
The Question
Back to your question, your sample
<div class="someClass"> <h3> #{book.name} </h3></div>
could be written as simple as
.someClass h3= book.name
Which is a lot more readable I think, so in that case you should consider a bad practice writing raw HTML, but not always.
IMO
IMO, common sense is the best good practice. Maybe i would consider using a raw chunk of HTML to insert a widget on the page, i.e. a youtube video or a custom google map <iframe>.
<iframe width="425" height="350" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="https://maps.google.es/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=217708588685721440865.0004d1d4faefdd11adf39&ie=UTF8&ll=43.167638,-7.838262&spn=1.010793,0.991384&t=m&output=embed"></iframe><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_Vkm2nMM3-Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
As said above, here doesn't makes sense to use the attribute syntax. The result is nearly the same, and is quicker leaving the raw html.
iframe(width="425", height="350", frameborder="0", scrolling="no", marginheight="0", marginwidth="0" src="https://maps.google.es/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=217708588685721440865.0004d1d4faefdd11adf39&ie=UTF8&ll=43.167638,-7.838262&spn=1.010793,0.991384&t=m&output=embed")iframe(width="420", height="315", src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_Vkm2nMM3-Q", frameborder="0", allowfullscreen)
Jade now provides inline syntax for nested tags:
a: img
turns into
<a><img/></a>
Taken from the official documentation.
you can use the following approach too to use plain html as your view engine.
app.set('views', path.join(__dirname, '/path/to/your/folder'));app.set("view options", {layout: false});app.engine('html', function(path, opt, fn) { fs.readFile(path, 'utf-8', function(error, str) { if (error) return str; return fn(null, str); });
});