How to use Elua

Elua is the minimal lua templating language I have written. It is quite simple.

Templates look like this:

<p>Numbers 1 to 4:</p>
<ol>
{% for i = 1,4 do %}
    <li>{%= i %}</li>
{% end %}
</ol>

Elua exports a module with the following methods:

---@param input string
---@return function(env: table?): string
function M.compile(input) end


---@param input string
---@param env table?
---@return string
function M.render(input, env) end

---@param from string
---@param to string
---@param env table?
function M.render_file(from, to, env) end

compile returns a function that given an template, returns a function that given a table env with the execution environment. The execution environment inherits the globals of its caller and by default includes just the globals.

render just compiles and immediately runs the template with a given env.

render_file is a helper that reads the template from a file from, renders it with execution context env, and saves the output to the the file to.

Nuances

Elua is generally unsafe. Arbitrary lua code between either {% %} or {%= %} will be executed.

For prettiness of outputs, any whitespace between non-printing blocks is omitted from the output.

You can see finbar.co as a practical example of elua. It includes a basic templating / packaging and component system in lua.