Mustache
A logic-less Ruby template engine that separates presentation from application logic.
What is Mustache?
Mustache is a logic-less template engine for Ruby that provides a clean separation between application logic and presentation. It allows developers to define view classes with data methods and reference them in HTML templates without embedding any code. This approach makes templates easier to maintain and test while keeping markup simple and focused.
Ruby developers building web applications who want to keep their templates clean and free of application logic, especially those using frameworks like Sinatra or Rails.
Developers choose Mustache for its strict separation of concerns, which leads to cleaner templates, easier testing, and reduced complexity in view layers compared to embedded Ruby templates like ERB or HAML.
Overview
Logic-less Ruby templates.
Use Cases
Best For
- Building web applications with clean, logic-free HTML templates
- Separating presentation logic from business logic in Ruby projects
- Creating reusable view components without embedded Ruby code
- Integrating templating into Sinatra or other lightweight Ruby frameworks
- Teaching or enforcing separation of concerns in template design
- Generating static HTML with dynamic data from Ruby classes
Not Ideal For
- Applications requiring complex conditional logic or iterative calculations directly within the template markup
- Rails teams deeply invested in ERB or HAML who rely on embedding Ruby code for rapid view development
- Projects needing a rich library of built-in template filters and helpers without writing custom Ruby modules
- Environments where templates must be executed or shared across multiple programming languages with identical logic (despite cross-language specs, this Ruby implementation adds overhead)
Pros & Cons
Pros
By strictly prohibiting application logic in templates, Mustache enforces clean separation of concerns, making templates easier to maintain and test, as emphasized in its philosophy.
It works independently of web frameworks, with demonstrated integrations for Sinatra and Rails, allowing use in diverse Ruby environments without lock-in.
Supports both class-based views with methods and dict-style procedural data, offering versatility in how data is supplied, as shown in the usage examples.
Defaults to escaping HTML characters for security, with triple mustaches for unescaped output, reducing XSS risks without extra configuration.
Cons
Defining a full Ruby class with methods for basic templates can be overkill compared to inline data hashes or engines that allow lightweight logic.
The logic-less design means even simple conditionals or filters require pre-processing in Ruby classes, lacking built-in helpers found in engines like Liquid.
Setting up with frameworks like Sinatra involves manual configuration changes, as noted in the README for upgrades, which can be error-prone for beginners.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
LiquidLiquid markup language. Safe, customer facing template language for flexible web apps.
SlimSlim is a template language whose goal is to reduce the syntax to the essential parts without becoming cryptic.
HamlHTML Abstraction Markup Language - A Markup Haiku
TiltGeneric interface to multiple Ruby template engines
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