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Pesto

Modern PHP template engine that provides an intuitive and expressive way to build web application views. It offers a clean syntax using custom HTML attributes and supports advanced templating features like view composition, slots, conditional rendering, loops, and built-in security measures.

Pesto understands the context of {{ variables }} and escapes them according to their scope to avoid Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) issues.

Or, for greater clarity, use <template>, which will not be included in the final render.

Pesto templates support files with the .html or .php extension, allowing you to integrate PHP code if needed.

• Installation & usage
• View Composition
  • The <template> Tag
  • Partials
  • Slots
  • Nested Views
• Control Flow
  • If Attribute
  • Loop
  • Inline
• Short Syntax
• Command Line
  • Compile
  • Lint
• Filters
  • Chain Filters
  • Filters with Arguments
  • Add Filters
• Benchmarks

Installation & Usage

• PHP ^8.4

Pesto is available via Composer and is free of third-party dependencies

View Composition

Pesto makes it easy to reuse parts of your views

Template Tag

The <template> tag allows you to define php-* attributes that will be evaluated but not the tag included in the final render.

• <p php-if="$user->isAdmin()">Admin</p> --> <p>Admin</p>
• <template php-if="$user->isAdmin()">Admin</template> --> Admin

Partials & Slots

When working with views that are composed of other views, you can use partials and slots to avoid repetition.

Layout

View:

Nested Views

Pesto allows you to nest views, allowing you to reuse the same layout for multiple times in the same view.

Control Flow

Pesto provides two control flow directives: foreach and if, enough to build any kind of view.

If Attribute

The only rule importance for use php-elseif and php-else is the tag must be a sibling of the php-if tag.

• php-if
• php-elseif
• php-else

php-if allows you to conditionally render a block of code.

Loops

Pesto provides a simple way to loop over arrays or objects.

Inline

Pesto also allows you to use inline control flow directives.

Short Syntax

Every php-* attribute has a shorter p:* alias, both forms work everywhere and can be mixed in the same template.

If an element has both forms of the same directive, the long form wins. Since no client-side framework claims the p: prefix, it is safe to combine with Vue, Alpine.js, or Lit bindings.

Command Line

Pesto ships with a pesto binary (installed at vendor/bin/pesto) to validate and inspect templates without rendering them.

Both commands read the template from stdin when no path is given (or with -).

Compile

Compiles a template and prints the resulting PHP, so you can see exactly what Pesto generates:

If the template is invalid, the errors are printed and the command exits with 1.

Lint

Validates templates without rendering them: it checks for unclosed {{ }} expressions, orphan php-else/php-elseif directives, unprocessed directives, and PHP syntax errors in the compiled output.

With --views <dir> the linter also verifies that every php-partial reference exists in the templates root. Without explicit paths, it lints the whole directory:

The exit code is 0 when all templates pass and 1 otherwise, so lint fits directly into a CI pipeline.

Filters

Pesto provides a simple way to apply filters to variables using the pipe operator, you can define your own filters.

List of Filters

• raw Prevents escaping of the variable.

String Filters

• upper
• lower
• capitalize
• title
• trim
• nl2br
• strip_tags
• slug
• join

Chain Filters

You can chain multiple filters together.

Filters with Arguments

To pass arguments to a filter, you can use the : operator.

Add Filters

Add filter to Pesto is very simple, you can create a class with public methods and add the AsFilter Attribute.

on Pesto factory pass the class to the filters option.

Benchmarks

Pesto includes benchmarks comparing performance against Blade and Twig across four scenarios: simple rendering, loops, conditionals, and partials.

Benchmarks are powered by PHPBench with 100 iterations, 10 revolutions, and 5 warmup iterations.