Mustache (template system)

Mustache

Initial release	2009 (2009)
Repository	github.com/mustache/mustache
License	MIT
Website	mustache.github.io

Mustache is a simple web template system with implementations available for ActionScript, C++, Clojure, CoffeeScript, ColdFusion, 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.

History and principles

Mustache-1 was inspired by ctemplate and et, 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. 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.

Technical details

Syntax highlighting is available in Vim, Emacs, 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. The last SPEC_VERSION is 1.1.2.

All Mustache Engines, in the v1.X architecture, have a render method, a Mustache_Compiler class and a Parser class.

External links

• Official website
• Mustache syntax
• Mustache spec