Thymeleaf

Thymeleaf

Developer(s)	Daniel Fernández
Stable release	2.1.4[1] / December 22, 2014
Development status	Active
Written in	Java
Operating system	Cross-platform
Type	Template Engine
License	Apache License 2.0
Website	www.thymeleaf.org
Standard(s)	XML, XHTML, HTML5

Thymeleaf is a Java XML/XHTML/HTML5 template engine that can work both in web (Servlet-based) and non-web environments. It is better suited for serving XHTML/HTML5 at the view layer of MVC-based web applications, but it can process any XML file even in offline environments. It provides full Spring Framework integration.

In web applications Thymeleaf aims to be a complete substitute for JSP, and implements the concept of Natural Templates: template files that can be directly open in browsers and that still display correctly as web pages.

Thymeleaf is Open-Source Software, licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

Features

From the project's website:^[2]

• Java template engine for XML, XHTML and HTML5.
• Works both in web and non-web (offline) environments. No hard dependency on the Servlet API.
• Based on modular feature sets called dialects.
  • Dialect features (e.g.: evaluation, iteration, etc.) are applied by linking them to template's tags and/or attributes.
  • Two dialects available out-of-the-box: Standard and SpringStandard (for Spring MVC apps, same syntax as Standard).
  • Developers can extend and create custom dialects.
• Several template modes:
  • XML: validating against a DTD or not.
  • XHTML 1.0 and 1.1: validating against standard DTDs or not.
  • HTML5: both XML-formed code and legacy-based HTML5. Legacy non-XML code will be automatically cleaned and converted to XML form.
• Full (and extensible) internationalization support.
• Configurable, high performance parsed template cache that reduces input/output to the minimum.
• Automatic DOCTYPE translations –from template DTD to result DTD– for (optional) validation of both template and result code.
• Extremely extensible: can be used as a template engine framework if needed.
• Complete documentation including several example applications.

Example

The following example produces an HTML5 table with rows for each item of a List<Product> variable called allProducts.

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th th:text="#{msgs.headers.name}">Name</th>
      <th th:text="#{msgs.headers.price}">Price</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr th:each="prod : ${allProducts}">
      <td th:text="${prod.name}">Oranges</td>
      <td th:text="${#numbers.formatDecimal(prod.price,1,2)}">0.99</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

This piece of code includes:

• Internationalization expressions: #{ ... }
• Variable/model-attribute evaluation expressions: ${ ... }
• Utility functions: #numbers.formatDecimal( ... )

Also, this fragment of (X)HTML code can be perfectly displayed by a browser as a prototype, without being executed at all: it is a natural template.

See also

• Template Engine (web)
• JSP
• Spring Framework
• FreeMarker
• Apache Velocity
• Template Attribute Language

References

1. https://github.com/thymeleaf/thymeleaf/blob/thymeleaf-2.1.4.RELEASE/ChangeLog.txt Change log for 2.1.4
2. http://www.thymeleaf.org/features.html Thymeleaf Features

External links

• Thymeleaf
• Spring MVC view layer: Thymeleaf vs. JSP
• Tutorial: Using Thymeleaf
• Spring Framework
• FreeMarker
• Apache Velocity
• Thymeleaf introduction: Create page templates for web and non-web environments