aniruddha-a / ctpl

C Templates

C Templates

A C based template engine, with C as the template language. I.e., create templates with C code embedded in it, that can be expanded at runtime (eval like capability!).

See tests/ directory. At a basic level, ctpl can be used as an extended sprintf where the host program's variables can be interpolated in the template [string] - anything between the @{ and @} tags. But any valid C code can go into the template - comments, declarations ...

The _() function does the actual interpolation. There are convenience macros like NL and TAB to insert newline and tabs respectively.

There are 3 parts to using ctpl:

Define a template

Template is any C string, with parts to be expanded under @{ and @} - there can be many such blocks.

Initialize

Call ctpl_init() with a buffer that can hold expanded template.

Expand

Call ctpl_expand(), passing as arg, template and all the variables/symbols used in the template (from the host program). This is where ctpl differs from other template engines which use dynamic/reflective languages! If the variable is not a basic C data-type, then ctpl_custom_type() call is needed. Also, the user defined type should be in a separate header file that should be given to ctpl.

Once expanded, the user provided buffer will have expanded string. ctpl_status() can be used to check if we succeeded or not.

Dependency

Packages to be installed on the host: libtcc-dev