logie17 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:
I've been using html::templates for most of my templating needs. I have been told that template::toolkit is a more powerful library. Without starting a flame war, I would be curious to find out what others think. Or if there are other template tools that are even better than those two.
Thanks!
s;;5776?12321=10609$d=9409:12100$xx;;s;(\d*);push @_,$1;eg;map{print chr(sqrt($_))."\n"} @_;
Re: I need to template this
by dragonchild (Archbishop) on Apr 19, 2007 at 16:15 UTC
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If H::T is sufficient for your needs, then don't switch. If it's not, then go to Template Toolkit. H::T was built, just so you know, as a reaction to TT version 1 because samtregar thought it was too heavy for his needs.
There are a lot of good reasons to use H::T over TT:
Now, TT is more featureful and has its own UI-compatible friends, like Jemplate. It all depends on what your needs are.
My criteria for good software:
- Does it work?
- Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?
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TT is too heavy for what you want
Sorry - this is long...
I hear the "too heavy" argument a lot as a reason to not use TT. I've
provided a test script below with benchmarks that show relative speed
for a highly contrived template. If TT is used in a mod_perl
environment - it is faster than HT. In a non-mod_perl environment (or
also in a mod_perl environment you could always use
CGI::Ex::Template and then you have the full features of TT
with the "lightness" of HTML::Template.
The other reason I hear is because they don't want to give too much
ability to the HTML designers or because they don't want to have
business logic in the templates. The first point seems roughly
equivalent to SysAdmins on my network telling me I have to use Lua
because they don't want me to have too many features in my
programming. On the second point - there is almost nothing you can do
to prevent your designers from controlling business logic from the
HTML -- Javascript provides all the rope they need to hang themselves.
The only option here is to ask them not to do that.
So if all the points for using H::T are really veiled non-issues - then the
only real reason to pick H::T over TT or likewise to pick TT over H::T is one
of religion and is generally based on what system the developer started with
in the first place.
Well - anyway - the following is a script that tests the templates under
different operational modes - passing in a string containing the template,
passing in a file containing the template, and caching the template in memory,
or the compiled template on the file system (isn't it funny that they all have
essentially the same feature sets but have diffent APIs and syntax). This file
is included with the CGI::Ex suite under the samples/benchmark directory.
Unfortunately the copy of this file on cpan is out of date - but will include
this updated file in the next release.
That script output the output below on my machine (I've removed some of the timethese
output to shorten what is presented). Remember that the template is used for the test is trivially short - but it does give a good approximation of "heavy" vs "light". The following abreviations are used:
TT - Template Toolkit with non-XS stash
TTX - Template Toolkit with XS stash
HTE - HTML::Template::Expr
HT - HTML::Template
CET - CGI::Ex::Template
_str - Means the module was passed a string containing the templat
+e.
_compile - Means the template was cached on the file system.
_mem - Means the template was cached in memory.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
+--
From a string or scalarref tests
Rate TT_str TTX_str HTE_str HT_str CET_str Te
+xtTemplate
TT_str 273/s -- -8% -72% -80% -82%
+ -83%
TTX_str 296/s 9% -- -69% -78% -80%
+ -82%
HTE_str 961/s 252% 224% -- -29% -36%
+ -40%
HT_str 1346/s 393% 354% 40% -- -10%
+ -16%
CET_str 1499/s 449% 406% 56% 11% --
+ -7%
TextTemplate 1605/s 488% 442% 67% 19% 7%
+ --
----------------------------------------------------------------------
+--
Compiled and cached on the file system tests
Rate TT_compile TTX_compile HT_compile CET_compile
TT_compile 694/s -- -11% -62% -71%
TTX_compile 775/s 12% -- -57% -67%
HT_compile 1817/s 162% 134% -- -23%
CET_compile 2353/s 239% 204% 30% --
----------------------------------------------------------------------
+--
Cached in memory tests
Rate HTE_mem TT_mem HT_mem TTX_mem CET_mem
HTE_mem 1374/s -- -37% -41% -57% -60%
TT_mem 2167/s 58% -- -7% -31% -38%
HT_mem 2340/s 70% 8% -- -26% -33%
TTX_mem 3163/s 130% 46% 35% -- -9%
CET_mem 3474/s 153% 60% 48% 10% --
----------------------------------------------------------------------
+--
All variants together
Rate TT_str TTX_str TT_compile TTX_compile HTE_str HT_s
+tr HTE_mem CET_str TextTemplate HT_compile TT_mem CET_compile HT_mem
+TTX_mem CET_mem
TT_str 285/s -- -0% -59% -64% -68% -7
+9% -79% -80% -83% -84% -87% -88% -89%
+ -90% -92%
TTX_str 286/s 0% -- -59% -63% -68% -7
+9% -79% -80% -83% -84% -87% -88% -88%
+ -90% -92%
TT_compile 692/s 143% 142% -- -11% -23% -4
+9% -49% -51% -59% -62% -68% -70% -72%
+ -76% -81%
TTX_compile 782/s 175% 174% 13% -- -13% -4
+2% -43% -45% -54% -57% -64% -67% -68%
+ -73% -78%
HTE_str 903/s 217% 216% 30% 15% -- -3
+3% -34% -36% -47% -50% -59% -62% -64%
+ -69% -75%
HT_str 1346/s 373% 371% 94% 72% 49%
+-- -1% -5% -21% -26% -38% -43% -46%
+ -54% -63%
HTE_mem 1360/s 378% 376% 96% 74% 51%
+1% -- -3% -20% -25% -38% -42% -45%
+ -54% -62%
CET_str 1409/s 395% 393% 104% 80% 56%
+5% 4% -- -17% -22% -35% -40% -43%
+ -52% -61%
TextTemplate 1697/s 496% 494% 145% 117% 88% 2
+6% 25% 20% -- -7% -22% -28% -32%
+ -42% -53%
HT_compile 1816/s 538% 536% 162% 132% 101% 3
+5% 34% 29% 7% -- -17% -23% -27%
+ -38% -50%
TT_mem 2177/s 665% 662% 214% 178% 141% 6
+2% 60% 54% 28% 20% -- -7% -12%
+ -26% -40%
CET_compile 2346/s 724% 721% 239% 200% 160% 7
+4% 72% 66% 38% 29% 8% -- -5%
+ -20% -35%
HT_mem 2477/s 770% 767% 258% 217% 174% 8
+4% 82% 76% 46% 36% 14% 6% --
+ -16% -32%
TTX_mem 2943/s 934% 930% 325% 276% 226% 11
+9% 116% 109% 73% 62% 35% 25% 19%
+ -- -19%
CET_mem 3617/s 1171% 1166% 423% 363% 301% 16
+9% 166% 157% 113% 99% 66% 54% 46%
+ 23% --
So using Template Toolkit with the XS stash in a mod_perl environment would offer the best performance (not
counting CGI::Ex::Template in a cached environment). I do agree that using TT in a CGI environment without any caching may be a bit heavy (I use CGI::Ex::Template in those cases). This has been a long answer to a short comment about
TT being too heavy. Apache is heavy too - but it gets the job done.
Personally I use whatever templating system the previous coder used when I go in and maintain code. But on all
new work I use CGI::Ex::Template because it gives me the power of TT, but is even faster and lighter.
my @a=qw(random brilliant braindead); print $a[rand(@a)];
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Dude, where's HTML::Template::JIT? I guess you didn't want to blow your premise by including the fastest templating system known to man. (I kid - honestly there's a good reason no one uses it, and that's because templating is almost never the bottleneck!)
-sam
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Re: I need to template this
by stonecolddevin (Parson) on Apr 19, 2007 at 16:13 UTC
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Well, there really isn't a reason this would start a flame war, T::T is a more powerful library. You have plugins from all sorts of modules, like DBI, CGI, Data::FormValidator, the list goes on. Check out the docs for a more robust list.
Out of the two, I'd choose Template::Toolkit. But that's only because I've used both, and found that it provides more of what I need at this point in time. You can do a lot with HTML::Template, it's a really simple and neat little module, but it's hard some times to deal with when you're manipulating large and complex data structures. It would be a good starting point though.
Have you looked at HTML::Mason as well? It's a little more like PHP in the sense that you can embed your perl code right into your template, but you can also abstract all your mark up away into "elements" as Mason calls them. Pretty neat if you have mod_perl and some time to install it.
Hope this helps!
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Re: I need to template this
by friedo (Prior) on Apr 19, 2007 at 16:19 UTC
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I like Template Toolkit, but that's probably because it's what I use the most. Here's what I like about TT.
- Default syntax stands out from HTML (however, I believe you can change the default HTML::Template syntax if you want.)
- You can call methods on objects passed to your templates. Some people abhor this, but I like to do it for Class::DBI and DateTime objects.
- TT has built in methods for iterating over hashes and arrays, whereas with HT you have to coerce things into an AoH to iterate. TT even allows recursion.
- It's easy to install new VMethods in TT for doing things to arrays and hashes (and scalars.) This can be a real time-saver if you don't want to do these things in your Perl code.
- TT has a lot of plugins available, for handling everything from LaTeX to DOM stuff within your templates.
- You can embed Perl in your templates. This has never seemed like a good idea to me, but it's there if you want it.
You might also want to read a bit about HTML::Mason, which lets you embed Perl in HTML, PHP-style. | [reply] |
Re: I need to template this
by rhesa (Vicar) on Apr 19, 2007 at 17:46 UTC
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I have one overriding reason to stick with HTML::Template, and that's the other people who are going to handle the templates after I'm done developing their application. They fall into two camps:
- Programmers, who will be tempted to abuse TT's power, and end up putting business logic in the templates (I count myself in this camp: the temptation is strong)
- Non-programmers; mostly graphic designers and/or end-users with administrative privileges, who don't know enough about programming to understand TT. H::T is simple enough for them to grok, but more complexity would be too overwhelming
If it were just me, I'd happily switch to TT. | [reply] |
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Hm... possibly you should consider using Mason then...
one of Mason's strengths is that Mason templates tend to have the feel of HTML, which lets web-designer types feel like
they know what's going on. Hypothetically a perl programmer
might be inclined to slip in a lot of perl into the template,
but in practice it's just as easy to put it in a perl module, and just add just enough glue code into the template to get it to use the module.
Myself, I'm less familiar with Template Toolkit, but I would say if you have a choice of ways to do it, you probably want to use either Mason or Template Toolkit: those are the two competing schools at the moment (notably they both have O'Reilley books), and in effect they're defacto standards.
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Re: I need to template this
by derby (Abbot) on Apr 19, 2007 at 16:15 UTC
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Re: I need to template this
by talexb (Chancellor) on Apr 19, 2007 at 20:12 UTC
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I'm going to jump onto the Template::Toolkit bandwagon. The main package for my most recent web application, called File Exchange System, looks like this:
[...]
use base CGI::Application;
use CGI::Application::Plugin::Session;
use CGI::Application::Plugin::TT;
use CGI::Application::Plugin::Stream qw/stream_file/;
use CGI::Application::Plugin::DBH qw/dbh dbh_config/;
use Template;
[..]
That gives my CGI::Application application session handling, templating, streaming (for stable file downloads) and intelligent database handle handling.
In addition to using Template Toolkit for web applications, I also use it for the installation script -- I have configuration file templates (for startup.pl, httpd.conf, Log::Log4perl files, and a main configuration file). I use TT to fill in the blanks to create the actual configuration files, then move the completed files to the appropriate locations.
Works great.
Alex / talexb / Toronto
"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds
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Re: I need to template this
by punch_card_don (Curate) on Apr 19, 2007 at 19:20 UTC
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I found TT really excellent. Here's my recent homage to TT with example in Meditations.
In real life, I had a 4-level-deep data structure that TT handled brilliantly with its built-in hash key ability.
Forget that fear of gravity,
Get a little savagery in your life.
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