Introduction

Kiln is a template language for building websites on the server. You write HTML with a small set of tags and expressions, and Kiln turns it into a page.

<h1>{{ site.name|upper }}</h1>
<ul>
	{% for post in posts %}
		<li><a href="{{ post.url }}">{{ post.title }}</a></li>
	{% endfor %}
</ul>

<h1>ACME</h1>
<ul>
	<li><a href="/blog/hello/">Hello, world</a></li>
	<li><a href="/blog/year-one/">Our first year</a></li>
</ul>

If you have used Twig, Jinja or Liquid, this will look familiar. Kiln keeps the syntax people and AI models already know, and changes the parts that tend to cause bugs.

What Kiln is good at

• Server-rendered sites. Layouts, components with typed props, includes and macros cover what a website needs.
• Loading data from templates. Templates can call async functions, such as document("page"). Kiln only waits when a call returns a promise.
• Running anywhere. The core has no dependencies and never uses eval, so it runs on Node and Cloudflare Workers.
• Templates you didn't write. Templates can only read data you pass them. Output is escaped by default, and limits stop templates that run too long.
• Clear errors. Strict mode catches typos, and every error shows the template, line and column.

How it works

You create an environment once, with a loader that finds your templates and any functions or filters you want to add. Then you render templates by name.

import { createKiln } from "@lucidkiln/core";
import { fileLoader } from "@lucidkiln/core/node";

const kiln = createKiln({
	loader: fileLoader({ root: "templates" }),
});

const html = await kiln.render("pages/home", { title: "Welcome" });

Kiln compiles each template once and keeps it in memory, so later renders are fast.

Where to go next

• Install Kiln in a Node or Workers project.
• Follow the quick start to render a page with a layout.
• Read Coming from Twig if you know Twig already.