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Name

Lemplate - OpenResty/Lua template framework implementing Perl's TT2 templating language

Status

This is still under early development. Check back often.

Synopsis

From the command-line:

    lemplate --compile path/to/lemplate/directory/ > myapp/templates.lua

From OpenResty Lua code:

    local templates = require "myapp.templates"
    ngx.print(templates.process("homepage.tt2", { var1 = 32, var2 = "foo" }))

From the command-line:

    lemplate --compile path/to/lemplate/directory/ > myapp/templates.lua

Description

Lemplate is a templating framework for OpenResty/Lua that is built over Perl's Template Toolkit (TT2).

Lemplate parses TT2 templates using the TT2 Perl framework, but with a twist. Instead of compiling the templates into Perl code, it compiles them into Lua that can run on OpenResty.

Lemplate then provides a Lua runtime module for processing the template code. Presto, we have full featured Lua templating language!

Combined with OpenResty, Lemplate provides a really simple and powerful way to do web stuff.

HowTo

Lemplate comes with a command line tool call lemplate that you use to precompile your templates into a Lua module file. For example if you have a template directory called templates that contains:

    $ ls templates/
    body.tt2
    footer.tt2
    header.tt2

You might run this command:

    $ lemplate --compile template/* > myapp/templates.lua

This will compile all the templates into one Lua module file which can be loaded in your main OpenResty/Lua application as the module myapp.templates.

Now all you need to do is load the Lua module file in your OpenResty app:

    local templates = require "myapp.templates"

and do the HTML page rendering:

    local results = templates.process("some-page.tt2",
                                      { var1 = val1, var2 = val2, ...})

Now you have Lemplate support for these templates in your OpenResty application.

Public API

The Lemplate Lua runtime module has the following API method:

process(template-name, data)

The template-name is a string like 'body.tt2' that is the name of the top level template that you wish to process.

The optional data specifies the data object to be used by the templates. It can be an object, a function or a url. If it is an object, it is used directly. If it is a function, the function is called and the returned object is used.

Current Support

The goal of Lemplate is to support all of the Template Toolkit features that can possibly be supported.

Lemplate now supports almost all the TT directives, including:

    * Plain text
    * [% [GET] variable %]
    * [% [SET] variable = value %]
    * [% DEFAULT variable = value ... %]
    * [% INCLUDE [arguments] %]
    * [% PROCESS [arguments] %]
    * [% BLOCK name %]
    * [% IF condition %]
    * [% ELSIF condition %]
    * [% ELSE %]
    * [% FOR x = y %]
    * [% FOR x IN y %]
    * [% WHILE expression %]
    * [% NEXT %]
    * [% LAST %]
    * [%# this is a comment %]

ALL of the string virtual functions are supported.

ALL of the array virtual functions are supported:

ALL of the hash virtual functions are supported:

MANY of the standard filters are implemented.

The remaining features will be added very soon. See the DESIGN document in the distro for a list of all features and their progress.

Community

English Mailing List

The openresty-en mailing list is for English speakers.

Chinese Mailing List

The openresty mailing list is for Chinese speakers.

Code Repository

The bleeding edge code is available via Git at git://github.com/openresty/lemplate.git

Bugs and Patches

Please submit bug reports, wishlists, or patches by

  1. creating a ticket on the GitHub Issue Tracker,

  2. or posting to the "Community".

Credit

This project is based on Ingy dot Net's excellent Jemplate project.

Author

Yichun Zhang (agentzh), <agentzh@gmail.com>, OpenResty Inc.

Copyright

Copyright (C) 2016-2017 Yichun Zhang (agentzh). All Rights Reserved.

Copyright (C) 1996-2014 Andy Wardley. All Rights Reserved.

Copyright (c) 2006-2014. Ingy döt Net. All rights reserved.

Copyright (C) 1998-2000 Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

See Also

  • Perl TT2 Reference Manual: http://www.template-toolkit.org/docs/manual/index.html

  • Jemplate for compiling TT2 templates to client-side JavaScript: http://www.jemplate.net/