Templating

Introduction to the Template Interface

Cement defines a Template Interface, as well as a default DummyTemplateHandler that implements the interface as a placeholder but does not actually do anything.

Cement often includes multiple handler implementations of an interface that may or may not have additional features or functionality than the interface requires. The documentation below only references usage based on the interface and default handler (not the full capabilities of an implementation).

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Cement Extensions That Provide Template Handlers:

• ​Jinja2

• Mustache

• Dummy

API References:

• ​Cement Core Template Module​

Configuration

Application Meta Options

The following options under App.Meta modify configuration handling:

Option	Description
template_handler	The handler that implements the template interface.

Working with Templates

The template handler can be used to render content in-line, as well as copy render source directories before copying them to their destination.

Example: Working with Templates

from cement import App

class MyApp(App):
    class Meta:
        label = 'myapp'
        extensions = ['jinja2']
        template_handler = 'jinja2'

with MyApp() as app:
    # create a data dictionary for templating
    data = {
        'foo': 'bar'
    }

    # render content as template
    app.template.render('Foo => {{ foo }}', data)

    # render and copy a source directory
    src = '/path/to/source/dir'
    dst = '/path/to/destination/dir'
    app.template.copy(src, dst, data)

When copying a source directory, both the file/directory path names themselves are rendered as templates as well as the contents of files.

Creating a Template Handler

All interfaces in Cement can be overridden with your own implementation. This can be done either by sub-classing TemplateHandler itself, or by sub-classing an existing extension's handlers in order to alter their functionality.

Example: Creating a Template Handler

myapp.py

from cement import App
from cement.core.template import TemplateHandler

class MyTemplateHandler(TemplateHandler):
    class Meta:
        label = 'my_template_handler'

    # do something to implement the interface

class MyApp(App):
    class Meta:
        label = 'myapp'
        template_handler = 'my_template_handler'
        handlers = [
            MyTemplateHandler,
        ]