Htmt 1.1.0

.NET 8.0 This package targets .NET 8.0. The package is compatible with this framework or higher.
There is a newer version of this package available.
See the version list below for details. 
dotnet add package Htmt --version 1.1.0                

                    
                

            
NuGet\Install-Package Htmt -Version 1.1.0
This command is intended to be used within the Package Manager Console in Visual Studio, as it uses the NuGet module's version of Install-Package. 
<PackageReference Include="Htmt" Version="1.1.0" />
For projects that support PackageReference, copy this XML node into the project file to reference the package. 
paket add Htmt --version 1.1.0                

                    
                

            
#r "nuget: Htmt, 1.1.0"
#r directive can be used in F# Interactive and Polyglot Notebooks. Copy this into the interactive tool or source code of the script to reference the package. 
// Install Htmt as a Cake Addin
#addin nuget:?package=Htmt&version=1.1.0

// Install Htmt as a Cake Tool
#tool nuget:?package=Htmt&version=1.1.0

Htmt

A simple templating language for .NET projects that is a superset of HTML/XML and is designed to be easy to read, write and have good editor support due to it being HTML/XML based and thus not needing any additional editor plugins. It fully supports trimming and native AOT compilation.

Example syntax

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <title x:inner-text="{title}"></title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1 x:inner-text="{title}"></h1>
        
        <div class="posts" x:if="posts">
            <div x:for="posts" x:as="post">
                <h2>
                    <a x:href="/blog/{post.url}" x:inner-text="{post.title}"></a>
                </h2>
                <div x:inner-html="{post.body}"></div>
            </div>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

Note how in x:if, x:for and x:as attributes the value is not enclosed in curly braces whereas in x:inner-text and x:inner-html it is. That's because these attributes are not meant to be interpolated, but rather to be evaluated as expressions.

Attributes that are meant to be interpolated are enclosed in curly braces, like {title} and {post.title}, which will be replaced with the value of the title and post.title keys in the data dictionary, respectively. It also means you can add other text around the interpolation, like Hello, {name}!.

Installation

dotnet add package Htmt

Usage

A simple example of how to use Htmt with default configuration to generate HTML output:

var template = "<h1 x:inner-text=\"{title}\"></h1>";
var data = new Dictionary<string, object> { { "title", "Hello, World!" } };
var parser = new Htmt.Parser { Template = template, Data = data };
var html = parser.ToHtml();

You can also generate XML output via the ToXml() method.

Attributes

x:inner-text

Sets the inner text of the element to the value of the attribute.

Htmt template:

<h1 x:inner-text="{title}"></h1>

Results in:

<h1>Hello, World!</h1>

x:inner-html

Sets the inner HTML of the element to the value of the attribute.

Htmt template where content is <p>Hello, World!</p>:

<div x:inner-html="{content}"></div>

Results in:

<div>
    <p>Hello, World!</p>
</div>

x:outer-text

Sets the outer text of the element to the value of the attribute. This is useful if you want to replace the entire element with text.

Htmt template where title is Hello, World!:

<h1 x:outer-text="{title}"></h1>

Results in:

Hello, World!

x:outer-html

Sets the outer HTML of the element to the value of the attribute. This is useful if you want to replace the entire element with HTML.

Htmt template where content is <p>Hello, World!</p>:

<div x:outer-html="{content}"></div>

Results in:

<p>Hello, World!</p>

x:if

Removes the element if the attribute is falsey.

Htmt template where show is false:

<div x:if="show">Hello, World!</div>

Results in:

x:unless

Removes the element if the attribute is truthy.

Htmt template where hide is true:

<div x:unless="hide">Hello, World!</div>

Results in:

x:for

Repeats the element for each item in the attribute.

Htmt template where items is an array of strings:

<ul>
    <li x:for="items" x:as="item" x:inner-text="{item}"></li>
</ul>

Results in:

<ul>
    <li>Item 1</li>
    <li>Item 2</li>
    <li>Item 3</li>
</ul>

Note that the x:as attribute is optional. If you just want to loop over a data structure, but you don't care about using the data of each individual iteration, you can omit it.

x:* (Generic Value Attributes)

Above are all the special attributes that do some logical operation, but you can also use the x:* attributes to set any attribute on an element to the value of the attribute.

For example, to set the href attribute of an element, you can use the x:href attribute:

<a x:href="/blog/{slug}">Hello, World!</a>

Results in:

<a href="/blog/hello-world">Hello, World!</a>

If slug is hello-world.

Extending

Attribute Parsers

You can add (or replace) attribute parsers in Htmt by adding them to the AttributeParsers array, when creating a new instance of the Parser class.

var parser = new Htmt.Parser
{
    Template = template,
    Data = data,
    AttributeParsers = [
        new MyCustomAttributeParser()
    ]
};

A custom attribute parser must implement the IAttributeParser interface:

public interface IAttributeParser
{
    public string XTag { get; }
    
    public void Parse(XmlDocument xml, Dictionary<string, object> data, XmlNodeList? nodes);
}

The Parse method is where the attribute parser should do its work, and the XTag property should return the xtag pattern for the nodes it should parse. For example if you want to add a custom attribute parser for an attribute called x:custom, you would do the following:

public class CustomAttributeParser : IAttributeParser
{
    public string XTag => "//*[@x:custom]";
    
    public void Parse(XmlDocument xml, Dictionary<string, object> data, XmlNodeList? nodes)
    {
        foreach (XmlNode node in nodes)
        {
            // all of the nodes are nodes that have the `x:custom` attribute,
            // so you can do whatever you want with them here.
        }
    }
}

To get an array of default attribute parsers, you can call Htmt.Parser.DefaultAttributeParsers(), if you want to add your custom attribute parsers to the default ones. But you can also mix and match however you like.

List of built-in attribute parsers
  • Htmt.AttributeParsers.InnerTextAttributeParser - Parses the x:inner-text attribute.
  • Htmt.AttributeParsers.InnerHtmlAttributeParser - Parses the x:inner-html attribute.
  • Htmt.AttributeParsers.OuterTextAttributeParser - Parses the x:outer-text attribute.
  • Htmt.AttributeParsers.OuterHtmlAttributeParser - Parses the x:outer-html attribute.
  • Htmt.AttributeParsers.IfAttributeParser - Parses the x:if attribute.
  • Htmt.AttributeParsers.UnlessAttributeParser - Parses the x:unless attribute.
  • Htmt.AttributeParsers.ForAttributeParser - Parses the x:for attribute.
  • Htmt.AttributeParsers.GenericValueAttributeParser - Parses the x:* attributes.

Limitations

Htmt is written on top of the System.Xml namespace, which means it has the same limitations as XmlDocument. This means that some HTML that is otherwise allowed by the browsers will throw an error when parsed by Htmt.

For example, the following HTML will throw an error:

<img src="image.jpeg">

This is because the img tag self-closes in HTML, but not in XML. To fix this, you can add a closing tag like so:

<img src="image.jpeg" />

While a third-party library would probably solve this, my goal was to keep the library dependency-free and as simple as possible because I'm just one person and I want something that I can maintain easily for a long time.

Product Compatible and additional computed target framework versions.
.NET net8.0 is compatible.  net8.0-android was computed.  net8.0-browser was computed.  net8.0-ios was computed.  net8.0-maccatalyst was computed.  net8.0-macos was computed.  net8.0-tvos was computed.  net8.0-windows was computed. 
Compatible target framework(s)
Included target framework(s) (in package)
Learn more about Target Frameworks and .NET Standard.

  • net8.0

    • No dependencies.

NuGet packages

This package is not used by any NuGet packages.

GitHub repositories

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Version Downloads Last updated
2.3.2 120 11/7/2024
2.3.1 95 11/7/2024
2.3.0 88 11/7/2024
2.2.0 89 11/6/2024
2.1.3 104 11/3/2024
2.1.2 94 11/3/2024
2.1.1 89 11/3/2024
2.1.0 95 11/2/2024
2.0.1 84 10/29/2024
2.0.0 113 10/27/2024
1.2.2 87 10/22/2024
1.2.1 79 10/22/2024
1.2.0 113 10/20/2024
1.1.1 113 10/12/2024
1.1.0 90 10/12/2024
1.0.3 100 10/11/2024
1.0.1 92 10/11/2024
1.0.0 92 10/11/2024

Replaced HrefAttributeParser with a GenericValueAttributeParser, and instead of Name attributes now target the XTag directly for more flexibility.