Cheetah Template One-Page Tutorial
By Chuck Esterbrook, now maintained by Mike Orr
Updated May 17, 2002

Substitution

The most commonly used templating feature is substitution:

My name is $name

You can use dotted notation to traverse objects. For example:

$author.person.primaryEmail

When a variable name is flush against other text you must use curly braces to separate it:

Jim is a ${vice}maniac.

However, the template language is savvy enough to handle sentence endings and variables:

My name is $name.
$foo$bar

#if (conditional)

The #if statement can be used to detect if a value is blank/undefined/NULL. The most common use for an #if statement is showing a different form of content if something is undefined.

#if $keywords
    $keywords
#else
    There are no keywords!
#end if

The #else part is optional:

#if $keywords
    <span class=keywords>$keywords</span>
#end if

#for (looping)

The #for statement is used to loop through any kind of list.

#for $author in $authors
    $author.person.fullName
#end for

Combining statements

You can combine statements. For example,

Template.html:

$name

<p> $content

#include "authors.html"

#if $authors
    <table class=Author>
    #for $author in $authors
        <tr class=Author> <td class=Author>
            $author
        </td> </tr>
    #end for
    </table>
#end if

Examples

Here is an example that lists several names and puts commas between them. Note the use of #slurp to slurp up extra whitespace that might interfere.

#set sep = ''
#for $author in $authors
${sep}${author.person}#slurp
#set sep = ', '
#end for