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Stencil

A fast, compliant implementation of Mustache in Clojure.

Introduction

Stencil is a complete implementation of the Mustache spec, including the optional lambdas.

The unit tests for Stencil will automatically pull down the spec files using git and run the tests against the current implementation (If you want to do this yourself, you can clone the repo and type lein test). Currently, all spec tests are passing.

To learn about the language itself, you should read the language documentation. The rest of this document will focus on the API that Stencil provides.

Like Mustache itself, the interface is very simple, consisting of two main functions that will probably do most of what you want.

(use 'stencil.core)
(render-string "Hi there, {{name}}."
               {:name "Donald"})
"Hi there, Donald."

The easiest way to render a small template is using the function render-string, which takes two arguments, a string containing the text of the Mustache template and a map of the values referenced in the template.

The keys of the value map can be either keywords or strings; if a keyword and string of the same name are present, the keyword is preferred. (Why support both? Keywords are more convenient to use in Clojure, but not all valid Mustache keys can be made into keywords. Rather than force strings, Stencil lets you use whichever will work better for you).

(render-string "Hi there, {{name}}."
               {"name" "Dick" :name "Donald"})
"Hi there, Donald."

For a larger template, holding onto it and passing it in as a string is neither the most convenient nor the fastest option. Most commonly, Mustache templates are placed into their own files, ending in ".mustache", and put on the app's classpath somewhere. In this case, the render-file function can be used to open the file by its name and render it.

(render-file "hithere"
             {:name "Donald"})
"Hi there, Donald."

The render-file function, given "hithere" as its first argument, will look in the classpath for "hithere.mustache". If that is not found, it looks for just the literal string itself, in this case "hithere". Remember that a file-separating slash is perfectly fine to pull a file out of a subdirectory.

An important advantage that render-file has over render-string is that the former will cache the results of parsing the file, and reuse the parsed AST on subsequent renders, greatly improving the speed.

Lower Level APIs

You can also manage things at a much lower level, if you prefer. In the stencil.loader namespace are functions that Stencil itself uses the load and cache templates. In particular, the function load will take a template name and return the parsed AST out of cache if possible, and if not, it will load and parse it. The AST returned from load can then be rendered with the function render.

(use 'stencil.loader)
(render (load "hithere") {:name "Donald"})
"Hi there, Donald."

At an even lower level, you can manually generate the AST used in rendering using the function parse from the stencil.parser namespace. Of course, doing it this way will bypass the cache entirely, but it's there if you want it.

Manual Cache Management

Stencil uses core.cache for caching. By default, Stencil uses a simple LRU cache. This is a pretty good cache to use in deployed code, where the set of templates being rendered is probably not going to change during runtime. However, you can control the type of cache used by Stencil to get the most benefit out of your specific code's usage patterns. You can set the cache manually using the function set-cache from the stencil.loader namespace; pass it some object that implements the CacheProtocol protocol from core.cache. In particular, during development, you might want to use a TTL cache with a very low TTL parameter, so that templates are reloaded as soon as you modify them. For example:

(stencil.loader/set-cache (clojure.core.cache/ttl-cache-factory {} :ttl 0))

You can also work at an even lower-level, manually caching templates using the cache function and the functions related to accessing the cache, then calling render yourself. You should read the source for a better idea of how to do that.

Core.Cache Optional Mode (Experts only!)

You can also run Stencil without the core.cache dependency present. If you don't have a really good reason for doing this, you almost certainly don't want to do it! It's not a great idea, and it doesn't provide any performance improvements or other benefits. It's actually all drawbacks and degradations. Nonetheless, there are unlikely scenarios where you might need to use Stencil this way to get by.

If you still think this is for you, you need to call stencil.loader/set-cache with a "cache-like object" before you attempt to use any Stencil functions, or you will get an error on any use attempts. A plain map will work. Be aware, though, that if your cache-like object is not actually a cache (ie, doesn't evict entries once it reaches a size threshold of some sort), then it's quite possible that this object will simply grow larger and larger in memory over time without end, depending on how your code uses templates. Some apps could get by in this situation (a command line app that runs once and exits immediately, for example), while others might not.

Manual Template Management

Sometimes it can be useful to refer to a template by name, even though that template is not available as a file on the classpath. In that case, you can register the template's source with Stencil, and later when you refer to that template by its name, Stencil will check first to see if it is one that you have manually registered, before checking the filesystem for it.

(use 'stencil.loader)
(register-template "hithere" "Hi there, {{name}}.")
(render-file "hithere" {:name "Donald"})
"Hi there, Donald."

Performance

Performance isn't the most important thing in a template language, but I've tried to make Stencil as fast as possible. In basic tests, it appears to be pretty fast. Of course, the actual performance of any given template is dictated by many factors, especially the size of the template, the amount and type of data it is given, and what types of operations are performed by the template.

In particular, the Mustache spec specifies that the output of lambda tags should not be cached, and so Stencil does not. Keep that in mind if you decide to use them in your templates.

I'd like to thank YourKit for helping me keep Stencil fast.

YourKit is kindly supporting open source projects with its full-featured Java Profiler. YourKit, LLC is the creator of innovative and intelligent tools for profiling Java and .NET applications. Take a look at YourKit's leading software products: YourKit Java Profiler and YourKit .NET Profiler.

Obtaining

Simply add

[stencil "0.5.0"]

to the :dependencies key of your project.clj.

Bugs and Missing Features

I don't currently know of any bugs or issues with the software, but there probably are some. If you run into anything, please let me know so I can fix it as soon as possible.

Recently

  • Released version 0.5.0.

    • Removed the dependency on slingshot, in favor of Clojure's built-in ex-info. ex-info was added in Clojure 1.4, so Stencil versions higher than 0.5.0 will require Clojure 1.4 or later. Thanks to Ryan Wilson.

  • Released version 0.4.0.

    • Lambdas that have :stencil/pass-render true in their metadata will be called with the render function as an explicit arg, in addition to the current context. This allows the lambda to have control of whether and when to pass the lambda's output through the full stencil rendering process. Careful use of this feature can enable performance improvements, but use with caution because it allows deviations from the usual rendering process. Thanks to Max Penet.

  • Released version 0.3.5.

    • Fixes a bug in the code that handles running without core.cache.

  • Released version 0.3.4.

    • Fixed output for boolean interpolations.

  • Released version 0.3.3.

    • It's now possible to run Stencil without core.cache. It's still probably not a good idea (see above).

  • Released version 0.3.2.

    • Fixed a problem causing an infinite loop when attempting to parse a malformed set-delimiter tag.
    • Updated code to work with Clojure 1.5. (Thanks to @bmabey).

  • Released version 0.3.1.

    • Update version of core.cache to one that fixes bugs.

  • Released version 0.3.0.

    • Performance improvements (Thanks YourKit!).
    • Keywords are now preferred over strings in contexts.
    • Change to using core.cache for more flexible and easier to use caching. API is slightly different, but only if you were managing cache policy manually (see above).
    • Lambdas that have :stencil/pass-context true in their metadata will be called with the current context as their second argument.

Previously...

  • Released version 0.2.0. Supports Clojure 1.3 and now builds with lein instead of cake. Now uses Slingshot for exceptions instead of clojure.contrib.condition; should not result in any code changes unless you are examining exceptions.

  • Released version 0.1.2, fixing bug in the handling of missing partial templates and adding functions to remove entries from the dynamic template store and cache.

  • Released version 0.1.1, fixing bug in the handling of inverted sections.

License

Eclipse Public License