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A web template system in web publishing lets web designers and developers work with ''web templates'' to automatically generate custom web pages, such as the results from a search. This reuses static web page elements while defining dynamic elements based on web request parameters. Web templates support static content, providing basic structure and appearance. Developers can implement templates from content management systems, web application frameworks, and HTML editors.


Overview

A ''web template system'' is composed of the following: * A template engine: the primary
processing element This glossary of computer hardware terms is a list of definitions of terms and concepts related to computer hardware, i.e. the physical and structural components of computers, architectural issues, and peripheral devices. A ...
of the system; * ''
Content resource Content or contents may refer to: Media * Content (media), information or experience provided to audience or end-users by publishers or media producers ** Content industry, an umbrella term that encompasses companies owning and providing ma ...
'': any of various kinds of input data streams, such as from a relational database,
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
files, LDAP directory, and other kinds of local or networked data; * ''
Template resource Template may refer to: Tools * Die (manufacturing), used to cut or shape material * Mold, in a molding process * Stencil, a pattern or overlay used in graphic arts (drawing, painting, etc.) and sewing to replicate letters, shapes or designs ...
'': ''web template''s specified according to a template language; The template and content resources are processed and combined by the template engine to mass-produce web documents. For purposes of this article, web documents include any of various output formats for transmission over the web via
HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...
, HTTPS, or another
Internet protocol The Internet Protocol (IP) is the network layer communications protocol in the Internet protocol suite for relaying datagrams across network boundaries. Its routing function enables internetworking, and essentially establishes the Internet. ...
.


Example

With the model typically held in a relational database, the remaining components of the MVC architecture are the control and view. In the simplest of systems these two are not separated. However, adapting the separation of concerns principle one can completely decouple the relationships. For example, the view template may look like this: Sites

Then, the control template loads the view, and then uses XPath addressing to insert components from a database, for instance: preserveWhiteSpace = false; $doc->Load('view.html'); $titlenode = $doc->createTextNode("Like this"); $xpath = new DOMXPath($doc); $xpath->registerNamespace("h", "http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"); $query = "//h:* data-xp='title'comment()"; $entries = $xpath->query($query); foreach ($entries as $entry) echo $doc->saveXML(); ?>


Kinds of template systems

A web browser and web server are a client–server architecture. Sites often also use a web cache to improve performance. Five templating system types are classified based on when they replace placeholders with real content and assemble pages. * Server-side - run-time substitution happens on the web server * Client-side - run-time substitution happens in the web browser * Edge-side - run-time substitution happens on a proxy between web server and browser * Outside server - static web pages are produced offline and uploaded to the web server; no run-time substitution * Distributed - run-time substitution happens on multiple servers Template languages may be: * Embedded or event-driven. * Simple, iterable, programmable, or complex. * Defined by a consortium, privately defined, or de facto defined by an open implementation. Ownership influences the stability and credibility of a specification. However, in most jurisdictions, language specification cannot be copyrighted, so control is seldom absolute. The source code of the template engine can be proprietary or open source. Many template systems are a component of a larger programming platform or framework. They are referred to as the "platform's template system". Some template systems have the option of substituting a different template language or engine. Programming languages such as
Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...
,
Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called ...
, C, and
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support template processing either natively, or through add-on libraries and modules. JavaServer Pages (JSP), PHP, and
Active Server Pages Active Server Pages (ASP) is Microsoft's first server-side scripting language and engine for dynamic web pages. It was first released in December 1996, before being superseded in January 2002 by ASP.NET. History Initially released as an ...
(ASP with
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,
JScript JScript is Microsoft's legacy dialect of the ECMAScript standard that is used in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 11 and older. JScript is implemented as an Active Scripting engine. This means that it can be "plugged in" to OLE Automation applica ...
or other languages) are examples, themselves, of web template engines. These technologies are typically used in server-side templating systems, but could be adapted for use on an "edge-side" proxy or for static page generation.


Static site generators

Static site generators are engines that use flat text input files like markdown and
asciidoc AsciiDoc is a human-readable document format, semantically equivalent to DocBook XML, but using plain-text mark-up conventions. AsciiDoc documents can be created using any text editor and read “as-is”, or rendered to HTML or any other for ...
to generate a static web page. Examples Jekyll (on
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), Hugo (on
GitLab GitLab Inc. is an open-core company that operates GitLab, a DevOps software package which can develop, secure, and operate software. The open source software project was created by Ukrainian developer Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Dutch developer ...
) Pelican ( Python).


Static HTML Editors

HTML editors often use web template systems to produce only static web pages. These can be viewed as a ready-made web design, used to mass-produce "cookie-cutter"
website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and W ...
s for rapid deployment. They also commonly include themes in place of
CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technolo ...
styles. In general, the template language is used only with the editor's software. FrontPage and
Dreamweaver Adobe Dreamweaver is a proprietary web development tool from Adobe Inc. It was created by Macromedia in 1997 and developed by them until Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in 2005. Adobe Dreamweaver is available for the macOS and Windo ...
were once the most popular editors with template sub-systems. A Flash web template uses Macromedia Flash to create visually interactive sites. Many ''server-side template systems'' have an option to publish output pages on the server, where the published pages are static. This is common on content management systems, like Vignette, but is not considered out-server generation. In the majority of cases, this "publish option" doesn't interfere with the ''template system'', and it can be made by external software, as Wget.


Server-side systems

People began to use server-side dynamic pages generated from templates with pre-existent software adapted for this task. This early software was the preprocessors and macro languages, adapted for the web use, running on CGI. Next, a simple but relevant technology was the direct execution made on extension modules, started with SSI. Many ''template systems'' are typically used as ''server-side template systems'': Technically, the methodology of embedding programming languages within HTML (or XML, etc.), used in many "server-side included script languages" are also templates. All of them are Embedded complex languages. There are also preprocessors used as server-side template engines. Examples:


Edge-side systems

Edge-Side template and inclusion systems. "Edge-side" refers to web servers that reside in the space between the client (browser) and the originating server. They are often referred to as "reverse-proxy" servers. These servers are generally tasked with reducing the load and traffic on originating servers by caching content such as images and page fragments, and delivering this to the browser in an efficient manner. Basic Edge Side Includes (ESI) is an SSI-like language. ESI has been implemented for content delivery networks. The ESI template language may also be implemented in web browsers using JavaScript and Ajax, or via a browser "plug-in".


Client-side systems

Many web browsers can apply an XSLT stylesheet to XML data that transforms the data into an XHTML document, thereby providing template functionality in the browser itself.
Other systems implement template functionality in the browser using
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
or another client-side scripting language, including: * Mustache
SquirrellyHandlebars


Distributed systems

The most simple form is transclusions (HTML frames). In other cases dynamic web pages are needed. Examples: * Ajax * Rich Internet application


See also


References

{{Reflist 9
Free ecommerce website themes
MG Technologies Blogs and Information Portal of Website Themes.


External links


JavaScript template libraries
comparison from 2009
Enforcing Strict Model–View Separation in Template Engines

A Double-Model Approach to Achieve Effective Model–View Separation in Template Based Web Applications

A PHP template engine comparison with graphic charts

Comparisons/benchmarks of some Python template-engines and some generic thoughts about template-engines

web-mode.el is an emacs major for editing web templates
Scripting languages * Web design