Hacker News Reader

Comment by DenisM | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if it's possible to compile it for iOS?

I need a templating engine in my app, and php seems like the most popular one.

PHP is a whole lot more than just a templating engine. I think you would find that much more effort than is required just to make some templates.

Perhaps you can send me down the righ path?

I want my users to be able to send emails from their iPads, and those emails would be generated based on templates. There will be many such templates built in, and eventually users will be able to hire web developer-type person to make custom templates.

My thinking was that PHP is the most popular language for that sort of thing, so it would be nice if could support that. My second choice is handlebars. I'm not sure if JSX would do the job?

Any thoughts appreciated.

https://github.com/groue/GRMustache

https://github.com/groue/GRMustache.swift

If solely for templating emails, I would go with handlebars.

You could use PHP but then you have a whole host of other stuff that you don't want or need in a templating language.

PHP is not a templating language. You can build a template engine with it, but then, you can build one with any other language.

If your app is in swift or objective-c, look into template libraries for those languages. Simple Google search tells me there's a couple of options including one using handlebar's format.

How is this not a template? It generates valId HTML out of data.

  <?php 
  for ($x = 0; $x <= 10; $x++) {
    echo "The number is: $x   <br>";
  }

https://twig.sensiolabs.org/

I don't think there are implementations of twig outside of PHP, so this isn't useful for the op

there is I use JTwig with Java + Spring all time

same syntax

https://laravel-news.com/laravel-markdown-emails

If you just need formatting without logic, then you could use something like Markdown.

Someone else already mentioned GRMustache [1], and that looks pretty good.

I'm not sure if there is an iOS version, but you could look for something like liquid [2]. I think liquid is usually a better choice for user-controlled templates, especially when you're rendering on a server. But if they're just compiling the templates on their own device, then handlebars (GRMustache) would be the right way to go.

[1] https://github.com/groue/GRMustache

[2] https://github.com/Shopify/liquid

I actually assumed this is a joke/trolling attempt, since it was a common joke to despisingly call PHP a "templating engine" a few years ago. But the follow-up seems so sincere that I don't even know what to think anymore...

That's the problem with trolling and hyberbole on any subject. People take it at face value and it becomes the popular narrative.

In terms of community impact, assuming bad faith is not far removed acting in bad faith. Both will inevitably drag down the level of discourse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com