microtemplate

Microtemplate is a term used to describe a small, lightweight templating language or engine intended for generating text or HTML from a data model. Unlike full-featured template systems, microtemplates prioritize a tiny footprint and ease of integration.

Key features often include a compact syntax for variable interpolation, simple conditional rendering, and loops limited to essentials; some microtemplates support partials or includes but many omit them. Security features like HTML escaping are common to prevent injection when rendering HTML.

Microtemplates are designed to be embeddable in a variety of environments, such as client-side apps with limited resources, server-side scripts, or build-time code generation. They are also used for email templates, config generation, or code scaffolding where dependencies must be minimal.

Design considerations: choosing a microtemplate involves balancing expressiveness against simplicity, ensuring safe escaping, deterministic performance, and portability across languages. Since the term covers a range of independent projects, there is no universal syntax; each implementation defines its own placeholder format, escaping rules, and control structures.

Relation to other tools: microtemplates sit between plain string substitution and full templating languages. They are contrasted with Mustache, Handlebars, Jinja, and other feature-rich engines, which offer richer logic and libraries but with higher complexity.