# Which template for ruby-begin project? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [December 12, 2009, 12:03pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-template-for-ruby-begin-project/180130 "2009-12-12T12:03:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![rubynut](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e8cbc/32.png) [@rubynut](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rubynut)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2009, 12:03pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-template-for-ruby-begin-project/180130/1 "2009-12-12T12:03:25Z")
Hi, Once we used Template::Toolkit (Perl) and Smarty (PHP) for templates, both are great. Now if we begin a new web project with Ruby, and choose the Sinatra framework, what’s the corrensponding template for it? And I believe Sinatra is lighter and easier to learn than Rails, is it? Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![rubynut](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e8cbc/32.png) [@rubynut](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rubynut)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2009, 12:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-template-for-ruby-begin-project/180130/2 "2009-12-12T12:26:40Z")
Ruby N. wrote: > Hi, > > Once we used Template::Toolkit (Perl) and Smarty (PHP) for templates, > both are great. > Now if we begin a new web project with Ruby, and choose the Sinatra > framework, what’s the corrensponding template for it? > And I believe Sinatra is lighter and easier to learn than Rails, is it? > > Thanks. Most of the people I know use HAML ( [http://haml-lang.com/](http://haml-lang.com/)). Erb and Mustache( [GitHub - defunkt/mustache-sinatra-example: An example of using Mustache in a Sinatra app.](http://github.com/defunkt/mustache-sinatra-example)) are options too. From Sinatra Book → [http://www.sinatrarb.com/book.html#template\_languages](http://www.sinatrarb.com/book.html#template_languages) ---
**Author:** ![rubynut](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e8cbc/32.png) [@rubynut](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rubynut)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2009, 2:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-template-for-ruby-begin-project/180130/3 "2009-12-12T14:14:53Z")
Ruby N. wrote: > And I believe Sinatra is lighter and easier to learn than Rails, is it? Yes - in the sense that it’s very much smaller, and you can easily grasp the whole of it. You’ll probably end up writing your own helper methods for the things you need - which in many cases is easier that wading through Rails APIs to try and find whether Rails has something pre-existing that you could use, and how to use it. As regards templates: note the following comment from the HEAD (unreleased) version of Sinatra. = 1.0 / unreleased - Sinatra now uses Tilt [http://github.com/rtomayko/tilt](http://github.com/rtomayko/tilt) for rendering templates. This adds support for template caching, consistent template backtraces, and support for new template engines, like markaby and liquid. So that’s a good place to look at available templating options. For generating (X)HTML I use HAML - you’ll either love it or hate it. I love it because my templates are tiny, I never have to close any tags, and I’m always guaranteed well-formed XML. ---
**Author:** ![rubynut](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e8cbc/32.png) [@rubynut](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rubynut)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2009, 2:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-template-for-ruby-begin-project/180130/4 "2009-12-12T14:33:14Z")
On Sat, Dec 12, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Brian C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > As regards templates: note the following comment from the HEAD > (unreleased) version of Sinatra. Thank you Brian for the useful information. ---
**Author:** ![rubynut](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e8cbc/32.png) [@rubynut](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rubynut)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2009, 2:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-template-for-ruby-begin-project/180130/5 "2009-12-12T14:20:00Z")
Oh, and for an example of a ‘larger’ Sinatra app, look at Vegas: > **[GitHub - alexch/vegas: template application demonstrating how to get Rails 3...](https://github.com/alexch/vegas)** > > template application demonstrating how to get Rails 3 pluggability without waiting for Rails 3 (Sinatra FTW) - GitHub - alexch/vegas: template application demonstrating how to get Rails 3 pluggabil... I don’t like the default choice of templating language, but you can steal ideas about how to bolt together things like ActiveRecord and unit/functional tests. On the subject of testing, have a look at Cucumber too, as that should also play nicelyu with Sinatra, according to [http://wiki.github.com/aslakhellesoy/cucumber/sinatra](http://wiki.github.com/aslakhellesoy/cucumber/sinatra) ---
**Author:** ![rubynut](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/8e8cbc/32.png) [@rubynut](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rubynut)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2009, 3:23pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-template-for-ruby-begin-project/180130/6 "2009-12-12T15:23:22Z")
Brian C. wrote: […] > For generating (X)HTML I use HAML - you’ll either love it or hate it. I > love it because my templates are tiny, I never have to close any tags, > and I’m always guaranteed well-formed XML. Unfortunately, you don’t want well-formed XML for Web apps – you want well-formed HTML4. XHTML never quite fulfilled its promise, and is not really supported in IE. (No, serving it as HTML is not the answer – the syntaxes are just incompatible enough.) I used to serve XHTML from Web apps, but I’ve changed them to HTML now that I understand the problems. Fortunately, with Haml, this is just a question of tweaking an option or two. With Rails, you also need the html\_output plugin to get the helpers playing along; I’m not sure about Sinatra. Best, – Marnen Laibow-Koser [http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org) removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid