TwigJinja

TwigJinja is a templating engine designed to bridge the Twig and Jinja templating languages. It provides a unified runtime and a compatibility layer that allows templates to be written in a common subset of syntax and executed in environments that traditionally use either Twig (PHP) or Jinja (Python). The goal is to improve template portability in polyglot projects while preserving familiar constructs such as variables, blocks, control structures, filters, and tests.

Development arose from community discussions about reducing duplication when PHP and Python components share presentation templates. The project emphasizes compatibility with existing Twig and Jinja templates, offering mappings between features and predictable rendering semantics rather than a brand-new templating model.

Key features include a shared syntax mapping for variables, control structures, and filters; an extension API for registering functions, filters, and tests across runtimes; security options such as auto-escaping and sandboxed execution; debugging support with clear error messages and stack traces; and template loading, caching, and incremental compilation. It provides compatibility modes to favor Twig-like or Jinja-like semantics where appropriate.

The architecture consists of a core renderer, a syntax translator layer, and runtime adapters for the target ecosystems. Templates are parsed into an intermediate representation and then executed by the renderer using adapters’ semantics, enabling cross-language template rendering while maintaining isolation between templates and host applications.

TwigJinja is used in polyglot stacks where teams maintain both PHP and Python components with shared presentation assets. Limitations include partial parity for language-specific features, possible performance overhead, and the need to manage differences in security models and extension ecosystems.

See also: Twig, Jinja2, templating engine, Nunjucks.