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Text Web Templates Considered Harmful

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Book cover Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 399))

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Abstract

For the last decades text-based templates have been the primary option to build dynamic web pages. Until today, no other alternative has rebutted this approach. Yet, using text-based templates has several drawbacks including: 1. blocking resolution, 2. programming languages heterogeneity, 3. limited set of templating features and 4. opinionated idioms. In this paper we show how a domain specific language (DSL) for HTML (such as HtmlFlow, Kotlinx.html or React JSX) can suppress the text-based templates limitations and outperform state-of-the-art template engines (such as JSP, Handlebars, Thymeleaf, and others) in well known benchmarks. To that end, we use the Spring Framework and the sample application PetClinic to show how a DSL for HTML provides unopinionated web templates with boundless resolving features only ruled by the host programming language (such as Java, Kotlin or JavaScript).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    wikipedia.org/Comparison_of_web_template_engines.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ADEETC, ISEL, Polytechnic Institute of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Fernando Miguel Carvalho & Luis Duarte

  2. Orange, Paris, France

    Julien Gouesse

Authors
  1. Fernando Miguel Carvalho
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  2. Luis Duarte
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  3. Julien Gouesse
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fernando Miguel Carvalho .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Alessandro Bozzon

  2. University of Seville, Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain

    Francisco José Domínguez Mayo

  3. Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal/INSTICC, Setúbal, Portugal

    Joaquim Filipe

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Carvalho, F.M., Duarte, L., Gouesse, J. (2020). Text Web Templates Considered Harmful. In: Bozzon, A., Domínguez Mayo, F.J., Filipe, J. (eds) Web Information Systems and Technologies. WEBIST 2019. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 399. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61750-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61750-9_4

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-61749-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-61750-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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