With glitter I tried to create a template processor which enables the user to create flexible, configurable templates.

This is a complete rewrite of the original ruby glitter in rust with some new features and YAML as base format for configuration files.

Each glitter processing file is a YAML that consists of up to four top-level parts:

• global
• local
• injection
• template

The global, local and injection parts are similar to each other - as all of them define variables that can be used in other places. But they differ in accessibility and scope:

• injection: The variables defined in injection are the only directly accesible from the template. Different to global and local this is not a dictionary/hash but an array of dictionary/hash. There can be multiple iterations defined - but at least one is necessary.
• local: See this as your workbench. You can define multiple variables either directly or by importing/loading/rendering other files. In the injection block you can then selectivly access those variables you need from your local storage
• global: Basically this is very similar to the local storage, only it is only run on the top-most glitter file. Global definitions on sub-files run using render are ignored. And all variables defined in global are accessible in all sub-files (load & render), while local-defined variables need to be passed along explicitly.

The template block can either be one string, which then is processed as often as there are injections. Alternatively you can define a header, body and footer which can all either be direct value definitions or file quotes.

The value replacement searches for either *{x} constructs, which then applies the value of variable x in that place - or via *> the rest of the line is taken as variable name and replaced accordingly.

All variable declarations are not processed directly when found, but only the definition is stored. Only when the variables value is actively accessed (either by using a sub-variable or by printing it into the output) is the variable actually interpreted.

Beware: A side effect of this is, that the same evaluation can happen multiple times. This might change in a later version.

A real How-To/Manual will be written, but the example files in the example-subfolder give already an impression what glitter is able to do.