Simple Templating

applyTemplate.js

const applyTemplate = (templateElement, data) => {
  const element = templateElement.content.cloneNode(true);    
  const treeWalker = document.createTreeWalker(element, NodeFilter.SHOW_ELEMENT, () => NodeFilter.FILTER_ACCEPT);

  while(treeWalker.nextNode()) {
    const node = treeWalker.currentNode;
    for(let bindAttr in node.dataset) {
      let isBindableAttr = (bindAttr.indexOf('bind_') == 0) ? true : false;
      if(isBindableAttr) {
        let dataKeyString = node.dataset[bindAttr];
        let dataKeys = dataKeyString.split("|");
        let bindKey = bindAttr.substr(5);
        for(let dataKey of dataKeys) {
          if(dataKey in data && data[dataKey] !== "") {
            node[bindKey] = data[dataKey];
            break;
          }
        }
      }
    }
  }

  return element;
};

template.html

<template id='itemTemplate'>
  <div class="item" data-bind_id='guid'>
    <h3><span data-bind_inner-text='title'></span> (<a data-bind_href='link'>#</a>)</h3>
    <div data-bind_inner-text='pubDate'></div>
  </div>
</template>

@PaulKinlan Nit!

-      let isBindableAttr = (bindAttr.indexOf('bind_') == 0) ? true : false;
+      let isBindableAttr = bindAttr.startsWith('bind_');