got

Got - Type safe Go(lang) templating

Got is a super-easy templating language for Go. It works by transpiling templates into pure Go and including them at compile time. These templates are lightweight wrappers around the Go language itself.

Usage

To install Got:

$ go get github.com/albertocaleffi/got/...

Then run got on a directory, it recursively traverse the directory structure and generate Go files for all matching .got files.

$ got mypkg

How to Write Templates

A got template lets you write text that you want to print out lets you inject actual Go code. This means you don't need to learn a new scripting language to write got templates—you already know Go!

Raw Text

Any text the got tool encounters that is not wrapped in <% and %> tags is considered raw text. If you have a template like this:

hello!
goodbye!

Then got will generate a matching .got.go file:

io.WriteString(w, "hello!\ngoodbye!")

Unfortunately that file won't run because we're missing a package line at the top. We can fix that with code blocks.

Code Blocks

A code block is a section of your template wrapped in <% and %> tags. It is raw Go code that will be inserted into our generate .got.go file as-is.

For example, given this template:

<%
package myapp

import "io"

func Render(w io.Writer) {
%>
hello!
goodbye!
<%
}
%>

The got tool will generate:

package myapp

import "io"

func Render(w io.Writer) {
	io.WriteString(w, "hello!\ngoodbye!")
}

Note the io package must be imported to your template. You'll need to import any other packages you use.

Caveats

Unlike other runtime-based templating languages, Got does not support ad hoc templates. All Got templates must be generated into Go code before compile time.

Got does not attempt to provide any security around the templates. Just like regular Go code, the security model is up to you. The text rendered in Got templates must be HTML-escaped to prevent XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) and other web vulnerabilities.

Credits

Got is based on the Ego templating package by Ben Johnson.