Mustache (template system)
| Initial release | 2009 |
|---|---|
| License | MIT |
| Website |
mustache |
Mustache is a simple web template system with implementations available for ActionScript, C++, Clojure, CoffeeScript, ColdFusion, Common Lisp, D, Delphi, Erlang, Fantom, Go, Haskell, Io, Java, JavaScript, Julia, Lua, .NET, Objective-C, Perl, PHP, Pharo, Python, Racket, Ruby, Rust, Scala, Swift, CFEngine and XQuery.
Mustache is described as a "logic-less" system because it lacks any explicit control flow statements, like if and else conditionals or for loops; however, both looping and conditional evaluation can be achieved using section tags processing lists and lambdas.
It is named "Mustache" because of heavy use of curly braces ,{ }, that resemble a sideways moustache.
Mustache is used mainly for mobile and web applications.[1][2]
History and principles
Mustache-1 was inspired by ctemplate and et,[3] and started as a GitHub distribution at the end of 2009. A first version of the template engine was implemented with Ruby, running YAML template texts. The (preserved) main principles were:
- "logic-less": no explicit control flow statements, all control driven by data.
- strong "separating logic from presentation": it is impossible to embed application logic in the Mustache templates.
The input data can be a class, so input data can be characterized as an MVC-view. The Mustache template does nothing but reference methods in the (input data) view.[3] All the logic, decisions, and code is contained in this view, and all the markup (ex. output XML) is contained in the template. In an MVP context: input data is from MVP-presenter, and the Mustache template is the MVP-view.
Examples
The simplest template:
Hello {{name}}
Template with section tag:
{{#x}}
Some text
{{/x}}
Here, when x is a Boolean value then the section tag acts like an if conditional, but when x is an array then it acts like a foreach loop.
Template that is not escaped:
{{&body}}
Here, if body contains HTML, it won't be escaped.
Technical details
Syntax highlighting is available in Vim, Emacs,[4] TextMate, Coda and Atom.
The Mustache templates support is built into many web application frameworks (ex. CakePHP). The support in JavaScript includes both client-side programming with many popular JavaScript libraries and Ajax frameworks like jQuery, Dojo and YUI, as well as server-side JavaScript using Node.js and CommonJS.
Specification and implementations
There are many Mustache Engine implementations available, and all of them meet a common specification (see external links) — that for final users results in the common syntax.
As of March 2011, the last SPEC_VERSION was 1.1.2.[5]
All Mustache Engines, in the v1.X architecture, have a render method, a Mustache_Compiler class and a Parser class.
References
- ↑ "Smashing Mobile Web Development", G. Avola and J. Raasch, 2012. ISBN 9781118348123.
- ↑ "Functional Programming Applied to Web Development Templates", J. Cady, 2011. MS Project Report.
- 1 2 https://github.com/defunkt/mustache/blob/master/README.md
- ↑ http://web-mode.org
- ↑ "Changes". Mustache. GitHub. March 20, 2011.