µMustache - Logic-less templates

µMustache is an effort to implement a very minimal version of a Mustache-like templating language.

It all fits in a single function and only supports two types of constructs that should be sufficient in many situations.

Use-case

The typical use-case for µMustache is something like an automated email template, where using a full-blown templating library is just overkill.

Usage

Here is an example of how to use µMustache:

$template = '{{var1}} {{var2}}{{subvar}}{{/var2}}';
$processed = umustache_render($template, array(
    'var1' => 'foo',
    'var2' => array(
        array('subvar' => 'bar'),
        array('subvar' => 'baz'),
    ),
));

Here we are passing the template and an associative array of parameters to the umustache_render function. The {{placeholders}} are then replaced by their values. One of the values is an array of associative arrays, which are then processed in a loop.

Constructs

µMustache only supports two constructs at this time, the variable placeholder and the section placeholder.

Variables

Variables are names within two sets of curly braces, like so:

{{name}}

A placeholder is simply replaced by a values associated to its name. If no value was provided for a placeholder, it is simply omitted.

Sections

Sections are loops on an array of data. Assuming the following array of data:

array(
    'myarray' => array(
        array('value' => 'foo'),
        array('value' => 'bar')
    ),
);

We can display it in the following section:

Behold the values:
{{myarray}}
  o {{value}}
{{/myarray}}

Which will generate:

Behold the values:
  o foo
  o bar

Note that the section tags have no effect in the whitespace.

Section tags can also be (mis)used as an if block like so:

array('true' => array(true), 'false' => array())

{{true}}
    Yes that's true!
{{/true}}
{{false}}
    Nope that's wrong.
{{/false}}

Note that if it looks ugly to you, that's a normal thing. Improvement needed.