Expressions

Handlebars-like, curly brace expression syntax is supported, allowing you to access variables from your Environment config or from a Template's Front Matter:

emails/example.html

      ---
title: Example
---

<x-main>
  The title is: {{ page.title }}

  You ran the `maizzle build {{ page.env }}` command.
</x-main>

Running maizzle build production would render this HTML:

      The title is: Example

You ran the `maizzle build production` command.

You may use basic JavaScript expressions within curly braces:

emails/example.html

      <x-main>
  doctype is {{ page.doctype || 'not set' }}
  this email {{ page.env === 'production' ? "is" : "isn't" }} production ready!
</x-main>

Running maizzle build, we would get:

      doctype is not set
this email isn't production ready!

Unescaping

By default, special characters are escaped when using two curly braces:

emails/example.html

      ---
markup: '<strong>Bold</strong>'
---

<x-main>
  {{ page.markup }}
  <!-- Result: &lt;strong&gt;Bold&lt;strong&gt; -->
</x-main>

If you need to render values exactly as they are, use triple curly braces:

emails/example.html

      ---
markup: '<strong>Bold</strong>'
---

<x-main>
  {{{ page.markup }}}
  <!-- Result: <strong>Bold</strong> -->
</x-main>

Ignoring

Other templating engines and many ESPs also use the {{ }} syntax.

If you want to prevent expression compilation and actually render the curly braces so you can evaluate them at a later stage, you have several options:

Ignore inline

The Blade-inspired @{{ }} syntax is useful for one-offs, where you need to ignore a single expression. The compiled email will render {{ }} without the @.

emails/example.html

      <x-main>
  @{{ page.markup }}
  <!-- Result: {{ page.markup }} -->
</x-main>

Undefined variables don't need to be ignored, they will just be output as you wrote them. You might want to use inline ignoring if your expression contains quotes ' , i.e. {{ foo: 'Bar' }} , to prevent Maizzle from escaping them.

Ignore in Front Matter

You may also use @{{ }} to prevent expressions in Front Matter.

emails/example.html

      ---
title: "Weekly newsletter no. @{{ user: 'Arthur Morgan'  }}"
---
<x-main>
  {{ page.title }}
</x-main>

Result:

build_production/example.html

      Weekly newsletter no. {{ user: 'Arthur Morgan' }}

Again, this is just to avoid Maizzle from evaluating the expression - you don't need the @ if your expression doesn't contain any quotes:

emails/example.html

      ---
title: "Weekly newsletter no. {{ user.name }}"
---

<x-main>
  {{ page.title }}
</x-main>

Result:

build_production/example.html

      Weekly newsletter no. {{ user.name }}

Ignore with <raw>

Use <raw> to ignore expressions or any PostHTML tags in a block of HTML:

emails/example.html

      <raw>
  <p>The quick brown {{ 1 + 2 }} jumps over the lazy {{ 3 + 4 }}.</p>
</raw>

<raw> will be removed in the final output, but the curly braces will be left untouched:

build_production/example.html

      <p>The quick brown {{ 1 + 2 }} jumps over the lazy {{ 3 + 4 }}.</p>

Change delimiters

You can change the delimiters to something else, like [[ ]]:

config.js

      module.exports = {
  build: {
    posthtml: {
      expressions: {
        delimiters: ['[[', ']]'],
        unescapeDelimiters: ['[[[', ']]]']
      }
    }
  }
}

Then you can safely use {{ }} and its contents will not be evaluated:

emails/example.html

      <x-main>
  <!-- This will be evaluated -->
  [[ page.title ]]

  <!-- But this won't be -->
  Hi, {{ user.name }}.
</x-main>

Undefined variables

Any variable that is not defined will be output as-is:

emails/example.html

      <x-main>
  {{ undefinedVariable }}
</x-main>

Result:

build_production/example.html

      {{ undefinedVariable }}