HTMLki takes a non-mainstream approach. Unlike inventing yet another PHP or Mustache it imbues old good HTML with new features - loops, variables, localization, custom tags and more without breaking its original clean form.

<ul $menu>
  <li "$classes">
    <img $icon src=$icon>
    <a "$url" target=$target>$caption</a>
  </li>
</endul>

What we see here is:

• A loop: <ul> is only output if there's at least one item in $menu
• An "if": <img> is only output if $icon is non-falsy
• A bunch of attribute magic: <li "classes"> (<li class="classes">), <a "url"> (<a href="url">)
• Anti-XSS: $caption is a variable, escaped by default

It has no dependencies and works out of the box in PHP 5.6 and above.

[ Full documentation ]

Available for Composer under proger/htmlki at Packagist.

Standalone:

// Configure your autoloader to load the HTMLki namespace from class/HTMLki/.

echo HTMLki\HTMLki::template(HTMLki\HTMLki::compile('<radio>'));
  //=> <input type="radio">

Because HTMLki is just HTML on steroids, any text editor with HTML/PHP syntax scheme gets highlighting right most of the time.

HTMLki imbues HTML with:

• XSS protection - output is HTML-escaped by default
• loops and conditions - like in the above example: <ul $list> and <if $a == 3>
• attribute magic - automatic expansion of <form file> into <form enctype="multipart/form-data">, <div "span-6"> into <div class="span-6"> and more
• tag magic
  • shortcuts (<radio> into <input type="radio">)
  • multitags (<thead/tr> into <thead><tr>)
  • singletags (<textarea /> into <textarea></textarea>)
  • and more
• language lines - simply any text wrapped in double quotes: <b>"Hello!"</b>
• expressions and variables - like { date('d.m.y') }
• PHP code - just as you guess: <?='string'?> - short PHP tags expanded automatically so you don't have to care about any particular php.ini settings
• function-tags - in form of custom tags like <include>
• input checking - clearly see what the template accepts: $>currentPage@1 int <= $lastPage
• most constructs can be escaped, such as ""Not a language.", {{ not_an_expr } and $$notAVar
• this list is not complete - refer to the documentation for all enhancements

The above doesn't require any additional integration code. However, you can tailor HTMLki into a markup ideal for your particular application by adding handlers for specific tags, attributes, etc.

For example, HTMLki can automatically expand src, href and action attributes into full URLs, or have tags like <errors> that output the list of errors linked to some input field (textarea, selectbox, etc.).