Thymeleaf is a Java XML/XHTML/HTML5 template engine that can work both in web (servlet-based) and non-web environments. It is better suited for serving XHTML/HTML5 at the view layer of MVC-based web applications, but it can process any XML file even in offline environments. It provides full Spring Framework integration.
In web applications Thymeleaf aims to be a complete substitute for JavaServer Pages (JSP), and implements the concept of Natural Templates: template files that can be directly opened in browsers and that still display correctly as web pages.
Thymeleaf is open-source software, licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
Features
From the project's website:[2]
- Java template engine for XML, XHTML and HTML5.
- Works both in web and non-web (offline) environments. No hard dependency on the Servlet API.
- Based on modular feature sets called dialects.
- Dialect features (e.g.: evaluation, iteration, etc.) are applied by linking them to template's tags and/or attributes.
- Two dialects available out-of-the-box: Standard and SpringStandard (for Spring MVC apps, same syntax as Standard).
- Developers can extend and create custom dialects.
- Several template modes:
- XML: validating against a DTD or not.
- XHTML 1.0 and 1.1: validating against standard DTDs or not.
- HTML5: both XML-formed code and legacy-based HTML5. Legacy non-XML code will be automatically cleaned and converted to XML form.
- Full (and extensible) internationalization support.
- Configurable, high performance parsed template cache that reduces input/output to the minimum.
- Automatic DOCTYPE translations –from template DTD to result DTD– for (optional) validation of both template and result code.
- Extremely extensible: can be used as a template engine framework if needed.
- Complete documentation including several example applications.
Thymeleaf example
The following example produces an HTML5 table with rows for each item of a List<Product> variable called allProducts.
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th th:text="#{msgs.headers.name}">Name</th>
<th th:text="#{msgs.headers.price}">Price</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr th:each="prod : ${allProducts}">
<td th:text="${prod.name}">Oranges</td>
<td th:text="${#numbers.formatDecimal(prod.price,1,2)}">0.99</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
This piece of code includes:
- Internationalization expressions: #{ ... } rh
- Variable/model-attribute evaluation expressions: ${ ... }
- Utility functions: #numbers.formatDecimal( ... )
Also, this fragment of (X)HTML code can be perfectly displayed by a browser as a prototype, without being processed at all: it is a natural template.
