https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja
MiniJinja is a powerful but minimal dependency template engine for Rust compatible with Jinja/Jinja2
https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja
jinja jinja2 rust templates
Last synced: 6 months ago
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MiniJinja is a powerful but minimal dependency template engine for Rust compatible with Jinja/Jinja2
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja
- Owner: mitsuhiko
- License: apache-2.0
- Created: 2021-09-15T07:51:31.000Z (about 4 years ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2025-05-06T10:18:13.000Z (6 months ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-05-08T20:55:46.812Z (6 months ago)
- Topics: jinja, jinja2, rust, templates
- Language: Rust
- Homepage: https://docs.rs/minijinja
- Size: 3.95 MB
- Stars: 2,014
- Watchers: 12
- Forks: 114
- Open Issues: 21
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- Changelog: CHANGELOG.md
- Contributing: CONTRIBUTING.md
- Funding: .github/FUNDING.yml
- License: LICENSE
Awesome Lists containing this project
README
MiniJinja: a powerful template engine for Rust with minimal dependencies
[](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/blob/main/LICENSE)
[](https://crates.io/crates/minijinja)
[](https://img.shields.io/badge/rust-1.63%2B-orange.svg)
[](https://docs.rs/minijinja)
MiniJinja is a powerful but minimal dependency template engine for Rust which
is based on the syntax and behavior of the
[Jinja2](https://jinja.palletsprojects.com/) template engine for Python.
It's supports all `serde` types and only has it as a single required
dependency. It supports [a range of features from Jinja2](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/blob/main/COMPATIBILITY.md)
including inheritance, filters and more. The goal is that it should be possible
to use some templates in Rust programs without the fear of pulling in complex
dependencies for a small problem. Additionally it tries not to re-invent
something but stay in line with prior art to leverage an already existing
ecosystem of editor integrations.
```
$ cargo tree
minimal v0.1.0 (examples/minimal)
└── minijinja v2.10.2 (minijinja)
└── serde v1.0.144
```
Additionally minijinja is also available as an (optionally pre-compiled) command line executable
called [`minijinja-cli`](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/minijinja-cli):
```
$ curl -sSfL https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/releases/latest/download/minijinja-cli-installer.sh | sh
$ echo "Hello {{ name }}" | minijinja-cli - -Dname=World
Hello World
```
You can play with MiniJinja online [in the browser playground](https://mitsuhiko.github.io/minijinja-playground/)
powered by a WASM build of MiniJinja.
**Goals:**
* [Well documented](https://docs.rs/minijinja), compact API
* Minimal dependencies, reasonable compile times and [decent runtime performance](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/benchmarks#comparison-results)
* [Stay as close as possible](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/blob/main/COMPATIBILITY.md) to Jinja2
* Support for [expression evaluation](https://docs.rs/minijinja/latest/minijinja/struct.Expression.html) which
allows the use [as a DSL](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/examples/dsl)
* Support for all [`serde`](https://serde.rs) compatible types
* [Well tested](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/minijinja/tests)
* Support for [dynamic runtime objects](https://docs.rs/minijinja/latest/minijinja/value/trait.Object.html) with methods and dynamic attributes
* [Descriptive errors](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/examples/error)
* Bindings for [JavaScript](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/minijinja-js),
[Python](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/minijinja-py), and [C](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/minijinja-cabi)
* Comes with a handy [CLI](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/minijinja-cli)
* [Compiles to WebAssembly](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja-playground/blob/main/src/lib.rs)
## Example
**Example Template:**
```jinja
{% extends "layout.html" %}
{% block body %}
Hello {{ name }}!
{% endblock %}
```
**Invoking from Rust:**
```rust
use minijinja::{Environment, context};
fn main() {
let mut env = Environment::new();
env.add_template("hello.txt", "Hello {{ name }}!").unwrap();
let template = env.get_template("hello.txt").unwrap();
println!("{}", template.render(context! { name => "World" }).unwrap());
}
```
## Getting Help
If you are stuck with `MiniJinja`, have suggestions or need help, you can use the
[GitHub Discussions](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/discussions).
## Related Crates
* [minijinja-autoreload](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/minijinja-autoreload): provides
auto reloading functionality of environments
* [minijinja-embed](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/minijinja-embed): provides
utilities for embedding templates in a binary
* [minijinja-contrib](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/minijinja-contrib): provides
additional utilities too specific for the core
* [minijinja-py](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/minijinja-py): makes MiniJinja
available to Python
* [minijinja-js](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/minijinja-js): makes MiniJinja
available to JavaScript via WASM (for Node and Browser)
* [minijinja-cli](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/minijinja-cli): a command line utility.
* [minijinja-cabi](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/minijinja-cabi): a C binding to MiniJinja.
## Use Cases and Users
Here are some interesting Open Source users and use cases of MiniJinja. The examples link directly to where
the engine is used so you can see how it's utilized:
* AI Chat Templating:
* **[HuggingFace](https://huggingface.co/docs/text-generation-inference/index)** uses it to [render LLM chat templates](https://github.com/huggingface/text-generation-inference/blob/0759ec495e15a865d2a59befc2b796b5acc09b50/router/src/infer/mod.rs)
* **[mistral.rs](https://github.com/EricLBuehler/mistral.rs)** uses it to [render LLM chat templates](https://github.com/EricLBuehler/mistral.rs/blob/c834f59fe0b3b020a56cb6a0279a051370554539/mistralrs-core/src/pipeline/chat_template.rs)
* **[BoundaryML's BAML](https://docs.boundaryml.com/)** uses it to [render LLM chat templates](https://github.com/BoundaryML/baml/blob/17123de7ea653f51547576169bb0589d39053edc/engine/baml-lib/jinja/src/lib.rs)
* **[LSP-AI](https://github.com/SilasMarvin/lsp-ai)** uses it to [render LLM chat templates](https://github.com/SilasMarvin/lsp-ai/blob/1f70756c5b48e9098d64a7c5ce63ac803bc5d0ab/crates/lsp-ai/src/template.rs)
* **[LoRAX](https://loraexchange.ai/)** uses it to [render LLM chat templates](https://github.com/predibase/lorax/blob/6a83954b8c6ffd51eb69e7096ee2730d53b903dd/router/src/infer.rs)
* **[tensorzero](https://www.tensorzero.com/)** uses it to [render LLM and system templates](https://github.com/tensorzero/tensorzero/blob/26ae697f219c1f0385fe7936b9f04b97ff318f61/tensorzero-internal/src/minijinja_util.rs#L2)
* Data and Processing:
* **[Cube](https://cube.dev/docs/product/data-modeling/dynamic/jinja)** uses it [for data modelling](https://github.com/cube-js/cube/tree/db11c121c77c663845242366d3d972b9bc30ae54/packages/cubejs-backend-native/src/template/mj_value)
* **[PRQL](https://prql-lang.org/)** uses it [to handle DBT style pipelines](https://github.com/PRQL/prql/blob/59fb3cc4b9b6c9e195c928b1ba1134e2c5706ea3/prqlc/prqlc/src/cli/jinja.rs#L21)
* **[qsv](https://qsv.dathere.com)** uses it [to render templates from CSV files](https://github.com/jqnatividad/qsv/blob/master/src/cmd/template.rs#L2) and to [construct payloads to post to web services](https://github.com/jqnatividad/qsv/blob/master/src/cmd/fetchpost.rs#L3).
* HTML Generation:
* **[Zine](https://github.com/zineland/zine)** uses it to [generate static HTML](https://github.com/zineland/zine/blob/17285efe9f9a63b79a42a738b54d4d730b8cd551/src/engine.rs#L8)
* **[Oranda](https://github.com/axodotdev/oranda)** uses it to [generate HTML landing pages](https://github.com/axodotdev/oranda/blob/fb97859c99ab81f644ab5b1449f725fc5c3e9721/src/site/templates.rs)
* Code Generation:
* **[OpenTelemetry's Weaver](https://github.com/open-telemetry/weaver)** uses it to [generate documentation, code and other outputs](https://github.com/open-telemetry/weaver/blob/d49881445e09beb42e1a394bfa5f3068c660daf3/crates/weaver_forge/src/lib.rs#L482-L567) from the OTel specification.
* **[Maturin](https://github.com/PyO3/maturin)** uses it to [generate project structures](https://github.com/PyO3/maturin/blob/e35097e6cf3b9115736e8ae208972178029a20d0/src/new_project.rs)
* **[cargo-dist](https://github.com/axodotdev/cargo-dist)** uses it to [generate CI and project configuration](https://github.com/axodotdev/cargo-dist/blob/4cd61134863f54ca5a037400ebec71d039d42742/cargo-dist/src/backend/templates.rs)
## Similar Projects
These are related template engines for Rust:
* [Askama](https://crates.io/crates/askama): Jinja inspired, type-safe, requires template
precompilation. Has significant divergence from Jinja syntax in parts.
* [Tera](https://crates.io/crates/tera): Jinja inspired, dynamic, has divergences from Jinja.
* [Liquid](https://crates.io/crates/liquid): an implementation of Liquid templates for Rust.
Liquid was inspired by Django from which Jinja took it's inspiration.
* [TinyTemplate](https://crates.io/crates/tinytemplate): minimal footprint template engine
with syntax that takes lose inspiration from Jinja and handlebars.
## Sponsor
If you like the project and find it useful you can [become a
sponsor](https://github.com/sponsors/mitsuhiko).
## License and Links
- [Documentation](https://docs.rs/minijinja/)
- [Discussions](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/discussions)
- [Examples](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/tree/main/examples)
- [Issue Tracker](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/issues)
- [MiniJinja Playground](https://mitsuhiko.github.io/minijinja-playground/)
- [Updating Guide](UPDATING.md)
- License: [Apache-2.0](https://github.com/mitsuhiko/minijinja/blob/main/LICENSE)