Port of Tera templating engine to Free Pascal

[Gustavo 'Gus' Carreno]

Hey Y'All,

We all know how bare the templating engines landscape is in Free Pascal.

With that mind, I decided to ask the Oracle for some help in implementing something like the Rust of Go templates.
The Oracle said that they both take a lot of inspiration in the Tera Templating Engine, and another that is JINI1(????)
The Oracle gave me an initial implementation, but no AST. I then pressed for a full AST example and a good Expression Parser.

The result of both the Oracle output and my own customisation and addition of the AST walker for rendering is now present here: fp-tera-tpl.

A bullet list of accomplished objectives:

• The {% include %} tag.
• The {% if %} tag with full expression evaluation.
• The {% for..in %} tag.
• The {{ variable }} tag.

I still want to attempt to add Left and Right Trim with these tag starting and ending: {%- and -%}.

Cheers,
Gus

[Thaddy]

fcl-web contains a pretty good templating engine.
You can expand that if required.
It is written for - but not tied to - webpages, but is is really agnostic.

[Gustavo 'Gus' Carreno]

Hey Thaddy,

fcl-web contains a pretty good templating engine.
You can expand that if required.
It is written for - but not tied to - webpages, but is is really agnostic.

I've used that templating engine before. I was quite frustrated that there was only call back functionality. And sure, with some time I could probably get it to a semblance of the Tera one. I think...

Both Rust and Go have this quite appealing syntax, with includes, conditionals and loops. Not to mention the fact that you can send a Class/Struct into them and they just consume it. That's still in the To Do list for mine.
I've now got fp-tera-cli to a point where you don't fight the call backs and have a quite comprehensive Expression Parser for conditionals.
Which is to say that, out-of-the-box, you can just drop a .tpl file, and it just works. With fp-web, there's a lot of assembly required!!

Again, the template engine that comes with fp-web is not that bad. It just lacks some basic features, IMHO. And after doing it with the Context concept, I quite like it.

Cheers,
Gus

[Thaddy]

It is in fcl-base, but we are talking about the same.

[gues1]

I don't know if I understand good, but there is something insede here that can help ?

https://castle-engine.io/

[Gustavo 'Gus' Carreno]

Hey Thaddy,

It is in fcl-base, but we are talking about the same.

OOPS!! Mea culpa, sorry !!!
Thanks for the correction!!

I'm tired. Spent about 20H on the port...

Cheers,
Gus

[Gustavo 'Gus' Carreno]

Hey Gues1,

I don't know if I understand good, but there is something insede here that can help ?

https://castle-engine.io/

Hummmm.... Never considered that Castle Engine might have a templating engine of itself.

Will have to have a look and maybe update My TestStar entry about templates.

Thanks for the hint !!

Cheers,
Gus