Tilt

Tilt is a thin interface over a bunch of different Ruby template engines in
an attempt to make their usage as generic possible. This is useful for web
frameworks, static site generators, and other systems that support multiple
template engines but don’t want to code for each of them individually.

The following features are supported for all template engines (assuming the
feature is relevant to the engine):

• Custom template evaluation scopes / bindings
• Ability to pass locals to template evaluation
• Support for passing a block to template evaluation for “yield”
• Backtraces with correct filenames and line numbers
• Template file caching and reloading
• Fast, method-based template source compilation

The primary goal is to get all of the things listed above right for all
template engines included in the distribution.

Support for these template engines is included with the package:

ENGINE FILE EXTENSIONS REQUIRED LIBRARIES
————————– —————– —————————-
ERB .erb none (included ruby stdlib)
Interpolated String .str none (included ruby core)
Haml .haml haml
Sass .sass haml
Less CSS .less less
Builder .builder builder
Liquid .liquid liquid
RDiscount .markdown rdiscount
RedCloth .textile redcloth
RDoc .rdoc rdoc
Radius .radius radius
Markaby .mab markaby
Nokogiri .nokogiri nokogiri
CoffeeScript .coffee coffee-script (+node coffee)

These template engines ship with their own Tilt integration:

ENGINE FILE EXTENSIONS REQUIRED LIBRARIES
————————– —————– —————————-
Slim .slim slim (>= 0.7)

See TEMPLATES.md for detailed information on template engine
options and supported features.

Basic Usage

Instant gratification:

require ‘erb’
require ‘tilt’
template = Tilt.new(‘templates/foo.erb’)
=> #
output = template.render
=> “Hello world!”

It’s recommended that calling programs explicitly require template engine
libraries (like ‘erb’ above) at load time. Tilt attempts to lazy require the
template engine library the first time a template is created but this is
prone to error in threaded environments.

The Tilt module contains generic implementation classes for all supported
template engines. Each template class adheres to the same interface for
creation and rendering. In the instant gratification example, we let Tilt
determine the template implementation class based on the filename, but
Tilt::Template implementations can also be used directly:

template = Tilt::HamlTemplate.new(‘templates/foo.haml’)
output = template.render

The render method takes an optional evaluation scope and locals hash
arguments. Here, the template is evaluated within the context of the
Person object with locals x and y:

template = Tilt::ERBTemplate.new(‘templates/foo.erb’)
joe = Person.find(‘joe’)
output = template.render(joe, :x => 35, :y => 42)

If no scope is provided, the template is evaluated within the context of an
object created with Object.new.

A single Template instance’s render method may be called multiple times
with different scope and locals arguments. Continuing the previous example,
we render the same compiled template but this time in jane’s scope:

jane = Person.find(‘jane’)
output = template.render(jane, :x => 22, :y => nil)

Blocks can be passed to render for templates that support running
arbitrary ruby code (usually with some form of yield). For instance,
assuming the following in foo.erb:

Hey <%= yield %>!

The block passed to render is called on yield:

template = Tilt::ERBTemplate.new(‘foo.erb’)
template.render { ‘Joe’ }
# => “Hey Joe!”

Template Mappings

The Tilt module includes methods for associating template implementation
classes with filename patterns and for locating/instantiating template
classes based on those associations.

The Tilt::register method associates a filename pattern with a specific
template implementation. To use ERB for files ending in a .bar extension:

>> Tilt.register ‘bar’, Tilt::ERBTemplate
>> Tilt.new(‘views/foo.bar’)
=> #

Retrieving the template class for a file or file extension:

>> Tilt[‘foo.bar’]
=> Tilt::ERBTemplate
>> Tilt[‘haml’]
=> Tilt::HamlTemplate

It’s also possible to register template file mappings that are more specific
than a file extension. To use Erubis for bar.erb but ERB for all other .erb
files:

>> Tilt.register ‘bar.erb’, Tilt::ErubisTemplate
>> Tilt.new(‘views/foo.erb’)
=> Tilt::ERBTemplate
>> Tilt.new(‘views/bar.erb’)
=> Tilt::ErubisTemplate

The template class is determined by searching for a series of decreasingly
specific name patterns. When creating a new template with
Tilt.new('views/foo.html.erb'), we check for the following template
mappings:

1. views/foo.html.erb
2. foo.html.erb
3. html.erb
4. erb

Tilt::register can also be used to select between alternative template
engines. To use Erubis instead of ERB for .erb files:

Tilt.register ‘erb’, Tilt::ErubisTemplate

Or, use BlueCloth for markdown instead of RDiscount:

Tilt.register ‘markdown’, Tilt::BlueClothTemplate

Template Compilation

Tilt compiles generated Ruby source code produced by template engines and reuses
it on subsequent template invocations. Benchmarks show this yields a 5x-10x
performance increase over evaluating the Ruby source on each invocation.

Template compilation is currently supported for these template engines:
StringTemplate, ERB, Erubis, Haml, and Builder.

LICENSE

Tilt is Copyright © 2010 Ryan Tomayko and
distributed under the MIT license. See the COPYING file for more info.