gorilla/template

Warning: This is a work in progress, and the v0 API is subject of changes.

Go templates are a great foundation but suffer from some design flaws, and this is a pity. They could be really awesome. gorilla/template is yet another attempt to fix them.

Goals

• Better composition options.
• Improved HTML support.
• Client-side support.
• Auto-documentation.
• Simpler spec and API.

These goals will be achieved through several phases.

Phase 1 - Dec.2012

The initial work makes templates self-contained, removing root templates. This greatly simplifies internals, spec and API without losing any functionality. Highlights:

• Removed New("name") API: templates are self-contained and must be named using {{define}}.
• Templates are always executed passing the template name, so there's no need for two Execute methods.
• The Set type replaces the Template type: a Set is a group of parsed templates.
• Parse tree: added DefineNode and Tree types.
• Node.String() methods result in templates that reproduce the original template exactly.

Phase 2 - Dec.2012

In this step the contextual escaping mechanism from html/template becomes part of the gorilla/template package, effectively making it a combination of text/template and html/template. Highlights:

• Same functionality of text/template and html/template but:
  • 1119 less lines of code.
  • 33 less types, functions and methods.
• HTML contextual escaping is set explicitly calling Escape().
• Types to encapsulate safe strings are placed in the template/escape package: CSS, JS, JSStr, HTML, HTMLAttr.

Phase 3 - Jan.2013

We finally add template inheritance and introduce two new actions: {{slot}} and {{fill}}. Highlights:

• A {{slot}} defines placeholders in a base template, and a {{fill}} fills a placeholder in a parent template.
• An inherited template is defined passing the parent template name in the {{define}} action, as in {{define "child" "parent"}}.
• New templates can't be added to a Set after execution: the set is "compiled" and locked, as in html/template.
• Inheritance and the new actions are inlined, so contextual escaping and execution didn't require any changes.