If you’re in a hurry, head over to the Github Repo here or glance through the documentation at https://squirrelly.js.org . Or, check out performance comparisons here . [Hint: Squirrelly is fastest] The need for a new template engine A while ago, I started searching for the perfect JavaScript template engine. It had to be simple, performant, flexible, . The problem was, none of the template engines out there really seemed to fit the bill. and lightweight One of the main issues was the tradeoff between size and power — most of the popular and flexible template engines add a lot of overhead. According to , here are the bundle costs (gzipped and minified) of some notable template engines. Bundlephobia Nunjucks: 23.3KB Pug: 231.8KB Handlebars: 21KB Swig: 10.2KB In contrast, some of the more lightweight templating engines — like doT or Mustache — lack features like precompilation, helpers, filters, custom delimeters, or running native code. Squirrelly to the rescue! Squirrelly weighs only , but it’s still incredibly flexible and performant — in fact, in a benchmark developed by MarkoJS, Squirrelly outperforms the other template engines in terms of speed almost every time! 2.6KB What makes Squirrelly so fast Instead, it has uses one master regular expression to find content between tags. Squirrelly doesn’t use a token parser. That’s right, there’s no need to run benchmarks comparing precompiling to compiling anymore! Squirrelly takes a string as input and returns a function as output. Squirrelly Precompiles by default. Features: Helpers, similar to Handlebars. Helpers can have helper blocks, too, that act as subcategories to the helper content (example ) {{#else}} Native helpers (helpers that compile directly into JavaScript code.) Custom delimeters (useful for writing in languages like LaTek) Partials Filters (like Nunjucks or Swig) Only 2.6KB Gzipped Not whitespace sensitive Auto Escaping Works with any language, not just HTML Comments Supports Express out-of-the box Caching Examples Comments {{!--This is a comment--}} References {{title}} Filters {{title|filter}} Helpers (like functions, but in the template) {{helpername(parameters)}} Some content {{#helperblock}} Other content {{/helpername}} Conditionals (a kind of helper) {{if(options.value==="hello")}}Hi!{{#else}}How are you?{{/if}} Partials {{include(mypartial)/}} Squirrelly compared to other Template Engines Performance benchmarks are here, run using tests from MarkoJS: . Squirrelly is almost always fastest, and usually has one of the smallest compiled sizes too. https://github.com/nebrelbug/squirrelly-benchmarks What Next Read the documentation at for more info. If you liked this post, give it some applause, or star the ! squirrelly.js.org Github Repo Squirrelly could also always use collaborators. Join the team by heading over to the repository and creating an issue or pull request.

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