Templates

V allows easily using text templates, expanded at compile time to V functions, that efficiently produce text output. This is especially useful for templated HTML views, but the mechanism is general enough to be used for other kinds of text output also.

V uses the special compile-time function $tmpl() for this, which generates template code at compile time, which is then executed when the function using the template is called.

Consider a simple example:

fn build() string { name := 'Peter' age := 25 numbers := [1, 2, 3] return $tmpl('template.txt') } fn main() { println(build()) }

template.txt:

name: @{name}

age: @{age}

numbers: @{numbers}

@for number in numbers
  @{number}
@end

Output:

name: Peter

age: 25

numbers: [1, 2, 3]

1
2
3

As you can see, we did not explicitly pass the name, age, and numbers variables to the $tmpl() function. However, they are still available within the template, because templates have access to the variables of the outer function in which they are used.

For more information about template directives, see template directives.