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Strings are a very important part of programming.

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And so let's now learn about an easy way

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to build strings,

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using something called template literals.

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And let's start by creating

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some new variables here about a person,

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and in this case, about me,

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so that we can then concatenate them

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into one big string.

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(typing)

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And the,

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birth year.

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Okay, and so let's now use

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these variables to build a string,

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something like, I'm Jonas,
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a 40 or 30 year old teacher.

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So we're going to then use this birth year

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to calculate the age of course.

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So let's call that one,

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simply, Jonas.

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And as we already learned

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in one of the previous lectures,

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we can use the plus sign

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to concatenate strings.

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And so let's now start by doing that.

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So, I want to write,

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I'm, and here I'm seeing a problem.

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So when I want to use this single quote here

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for writing something like I'm, or isn't,

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so basically when I need this symbol here

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then I need to write the string itself,

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using double quotes, okay,

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because otherwise the single quote

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that I'm using here for I'm will finish the string.

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So, I'm, and then I need a space,

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then the plus.

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And so here I'm saying, I'm Jonas,

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and now I can actually use the single quotes.

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So what matters is that in each string,

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we start and finish with the same symbol,

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right.

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But both just create strings, the same way.

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So right now we have, I'm Jonas, comma, A,

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and now we want the age,

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so let's say, a 30 year old teacher.

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So we need another space here,

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and then let's actually calculate the age.

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So that's the current year

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so let's put that here as well,

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and let's again say that the year is 2037.

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So plus year,

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minus the birth year.

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Now in order to make this work,

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we actually need to put this operation

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between parenthesis.

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Like this.

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And so it will do the calculation first,

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and then the concatenation.

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But you might be wondering,
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well the result of this is going to be a number.

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Right?

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But the rest of the things

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that we're adding here are strings.

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So how is this gonna work?

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Well, this has to do with something

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called type coercion,

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which is something that we're going

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to talk about a little bit later in the section.

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But basically JavaScript will simply

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convert this number to a string,

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so that it can concatenate them

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so that it can join them

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with the rest of the strings.

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So you will see that it's going
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to work just fine.

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Okay, years old.

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And then,

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the job.

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Then we can finish with

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an exclamation mark or something like that.

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Now right, and then,

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let's also log this to the console

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so we can take a look at it.

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Okay,

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so, I'm Jonas a 46 years old teacher,

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and we're missing some spaces here.

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So that's around the years old,

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and you see that this is kind of a pain

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to manage these spaces

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and what to keep track kind of,

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of how the sentence is structured.

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And so we will see a great solution to that in a second.

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So now it works.

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And, yeah, just as expected.

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So as I was saying,

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for a complex string like this one,

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this can be kind of a pain.

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And so that's why starting with ESXi,

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we have a much better tool

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for doing this kind of stuff now,

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which is called, Template literals.

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So with template literals,

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we can write a string in a more normal way,

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and then basically insert the variables

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directly into the string

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and then they will simply be replaced.

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So basically a template literal

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can assemble multiple pieces into one final string.

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So let me show you how that works.

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So let's call this one,

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Jonas

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new.

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And now to write a template literal,

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we need to use backticks.

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So that's this symbol here.

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And on the English keyboard,

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you will find this one above the tab key.

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So again, we really need to use these backticks
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to tell JavaScript that we're writing a template string,

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the single quotes or double quotes won't work

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for what we're going to do now.

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So now, as I said, we simply write a string

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and insert the variables in there.

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So I'm.

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And then we use the dollar sign, curly braces,

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and then the variable name.

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So, I'm, first name,

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and just to see if this actually works

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let's log it to a console.

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So that's Jonas new.

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And indeed, I'm Jonas.

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So you see that this is much easier,

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because all we have is this one string,
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and then here we used this syntax

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to insert the first name variable.

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And now we can continue this

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and it's going to be a lot easier.

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A,

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and then again, a variable.

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Now in this case, we actually need a calculation,

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and that's no problem at all.

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We can basically write any JavaScript here

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inside of these curly braces.

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All right.

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Technically, we can write any expressions,

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but more about expressions in one of the later lectures.

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So year, minus birth year,

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just as we did above,

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year

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old,

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and then, teacher.

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So no plus signs.

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No, thinking where we should put the spaces

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like we did here.

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And so this is a lot easier,

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let's reload.

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Oh, and indeed there is a bug here

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so of course that's not teacher.

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That's actually the value of the variable, job,

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that we're interested in here.

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But once again, we found this bug,

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because we simply read the error message.

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So get into this habit of always reading

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the error message to try to figure out

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where you are wrong. All right.

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And now of course it works

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and I hope that you can see

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that this is a way easier way of writing this string.

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This really kind of assembles the string

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using the pieces that we give it.

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For example this variable here

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or this value that is produced by the minus operator.

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Great.

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So now you know how template strings work in JavaScript,

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and in particular in ESXi.

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And actually it's one of the most used ESXi features

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it's really amazing and really useful in many situations.
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Now I just wanted to let you know

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that we can actually also use backticks

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to write all strings.

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So strings, where we do not,

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insert any of these kind of placeholders here, like this.

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So, we just demonstrated to you.

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So we can use backticks for any irregular string.

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So, you see that it works here just the same.

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And many developers actually started using backticks

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for all strings,

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because then you don't have to think

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about which quotation marks you should use,

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you just use backticks, always.

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And then in case you need to insert a variable,

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then it's much easier than to go back
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and switch out the regular quotes.

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So that's a choice that you can make.

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I actually don't do that myself,

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but I can see that it actually makes sense.

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All right.

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Now another great use case of template literals

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is to create multiline strings.

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So that's something that,

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before template strings was a bit cumbersome to write.

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So let me just show that to you.

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So if you wanted a multiline string before ESXi,

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you would have to write, string, with,

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and then you needed this backslash, n,

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which in many programming languages means new line.

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All right.

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So basically this is like a special character in

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programming, which in strings,

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always means that a new line should be created.

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And then in JavaScript,

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we would need another backslash like this,

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and then we could move to the next line and continue here.

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Multiple, let's create a new one,

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and then the lines.

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And this actually only works because of a bug,

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that's in the language.

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But let's see.

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So we get string with multiple lines,

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and you see that it's all the same string

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but yeah, spread across multiple lines.

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But indeed now with template strings,

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there is an easier way of doing this.

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So all we have to do is simply hit return,

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and it will create a new line for us.

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And this is actually going to be immensely useful

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later when we start building HTML from JavaScript.

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So by then we will be able to use these backticks

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to create multiline HTML elements

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to insert them onto a page, dynamically.

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So that's going to be a lot of fun.

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Let's just see if this works,

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and indeed it does.

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So whenever you need a multiline string,

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you always make sure to use this template literal

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because it's a lot cleaner.
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Alright, and that's actually it about template literals.

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In the next lecture,

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we will finally start to make or code,

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a lot more fun

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and take it to the next level by taking decisions.