kiwi

Simple, modular, fast and lightweight template engine, based on jQuery templates syntax.

Usage no npm install needed!

<script type="module">
  import kiwi from 'https://cdn.skypack.dev/kiwi';
</script>

README

Kiwi

What is this?

Kiwi is a cool JavaScript template engine lovingly built from the ground up for Node.js with performance, extensibility, modularity and security in mind. It is compatible with most of jQuery templates syntax, and adds lots of features to it. This means Kiwi is:

  • Fast. Insanely fast.
  • Completely asynchronous. You have the absolute guarantee that not a single blocking call will be done after Kiwi has been initialized.
  • Easily extensible. Three short lines of code are enough to create a new tag.
  • Incredibly powerful, even for advanced features. Want dynamic template inheritance? Access individual block contents? Done!
  • Easy to set up. One line of code and you can get started on Express 3.x. You can even directly use your existing jQuery or jqTpl templates.
  • Robust. Kiwi is carefully tested before any change is pushed to the repository.
  • Full-featured. Lots of filters are available, and it can't be easier to add your own if you want.
  • Secure. All output is escaped by default.
  • Clean. Kiwi won't mess with your prototypes, and won't extend any of the built-in JavaScript objects

Syntax

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>${title}</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>
      {{if name}}
        Hello, ${name|capitalize}!
      {{else}}
        Hello, dear unknown!
      {{/if}}
    </p>
  </body>
</html>

Installation

Latest release

npm install kiwi

Development version (may not be suited for production [yet])

npm install https://github.com/coolony/kiwi/tarball/master

Usage

var kiwi = require('kiwi');

var template = '<p>Hello, ${name}!</p>';
new kiwi.Template(template).render({name: "Kiwi"}, function onRendered(err, rendered) {
  console.log('Rendered template is: ' + rendered);
});

Available filters

  • escape
  • capitalize
  • upper
  • lower
  • json
  • add
  • subtract
  • mul
  • div
  • cut
  • addslashes
  • stripslashes
  • first
  • last
  • length
  • reverse
  • join
  • urlencode
  • urldecode
  • replace
  • date
  • relativedate
  • timeago

Performance tips

  • Use cache in production
  • Use strict mode
    You can disable strict mode in order to make Kiwi comply with jQuery template / jqTpl behaviour. However, this will result in using a bunch of try…catch blocks in the compiled templates, which will definitely lower Kiwi's performance.
    Strict mode is enabled by default.
  • Avoid using tmpl
    In order to avoid memory leaks when using heavily dynamic templates in tmpl, this tag uses CappedCache by default, isolated from the main cache. As a result, if your nested templates are heavily dynamic, a new complete compiler stack is likely to be started each time a tmpl tag is met.
    You may choose to use a standard cache instead, but be aware that this could easily lead to huge memory leaks if your nested templates are heavily dynamic.
    It is included for compatibility with jQuery templates / jqTpl, but you should probably not use it at all.
  • Consider disabling eachLoopCounters
    Kiwi adds counters to each loop, which allows you, for example, to access the current iteration count with _eachLoop.counter. If you don't need this functionality, disabling it will slightly increase Kiwi's performance when using each loops.

License

Kiwi is released under an MIT license

Copyright ©2012 Pierre Matri pierre.matri@coolony.com

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.