EJS vs Nunjucks

Overview

Nunjucks

Stacks86

Followers91

Votes6

GitHub Stars8.8K

Forks647

EJS

Stacks522

Followers359

Votes18

GitHub Stars8.0K

Forks859

EJS vs Nunjucks: What are the differences?

Introduction

EJS and Nunjucks are both popular templating engines used in web development. While they serve the same purpose of generating dynamic HTML content, there are key differences between the two. This article aims to highlight the main distinctions between EJS and Nunjucks.

Execution environment: EJS is primarily executed on the server-side, meaning the rendering of templates occurs on the server before the HTML is sent to the client. On the other hand, Nunjucks can be executed both on the server-side and in the browser, providing the flexibility to generate HTML dynamically on either the server or the client side.
Syntax: EJS uses a simple and concise syntax similar to regular JavaScript, making it easier for developers familiar with JavaScript to start using EJS. In contrast, Nunjucks has a more robust and feature-rich syntax that includes extra features like template inheritance, macros, and filters, providing more advanced templating capabilities.
Template inheritance: Nunjucks supports template inheritance, allowing developers to create a base template that can be extended by child templates. This feature facilitates code reusability by allowing common elements like headers and footers to be defined in the base template and inherited by multiple other templates. EJS, on the other hand, does not natively support template inheritance.
Built-in filters: Nunjucks provides a wide range of built-in filters that can be used to modify and format data within templates. These filters include date and time formatting, string manipulation, math calculations, and more. EJS, on the other hand, does not have built-in filters and requires additional code or third-party libraries to achieve similar functionality.
Asynchronous support: Nunjucks has built-in support for asynchronous operations, allowing developers to work with promises and async/await syntax within the templates. This makes it easier to perform asynchronous tasks like making API requests or querying databases directly within the template. EJS, on the other hand, does not have built-in support for asynchronous operations.
Extensibility: Nunjucks allows developers to create custom filters, functions, and tags to extend the templating engine's functionality. This enables developers to write their own logic and integrate it seamlessly into the templates. EJS, on the other hand, has limited extensibility options and does not provide a built-in mechanism for creating custom filters or tags.

In summary, EJS and Nunjucks differ in their execution environment, syntax, template inheritance support, built-in filters, asynchronous support, and extensibility options.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Detailed Comparison

Nunjucks	EJS
Rich Powerful language with block inheritance, autoescaping, macros, asynchronous control, and more. Heavily inspired by jinja2. It supports all modern browsers.	It is a simple templating language that lets you generate HTML markup with plain JavaScript. No religiousness about how to organize things. No reinvention of iteration and control-flow. It's just plain JavaScript.
-	Template caching and partials;Intelligent error handling with line numbers
Statistics
GitHub Stars 8.8K	GitHub Stars 8.0K
GitHub Forks 647	GitHub Forks 859
Stacks 86	Stacks 522
Followers 91	Followers 359
Votes 6	Votes 18
Pros & Cons
Pros 4 Supported by Mozilla 2 Easy sintaxis like JS	Pros 6 For a beginner it's just plain javascript code 6 It'a easy to understand the concept behind it 3 Quick for templating UI project 3 You almost know how to use it from start
Integrations
JavaScript Google Chrome Firefox	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Nunjucks, EJS?

TypeScript

TypeScript is a language for application-scale JavaScript development. It's a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript.

Pug

This project was formerly known as "Jade." Pug is a high performance template engine heavily influenced by Haml and implemented with JavaScript for Node.js and browsers.

Handlebars.js

Handlebars.js is an extension to the Mustache templating language created by Chris Wanstrath. Handlebars.js and Mustache are both logicless templating languages that keep the view and the code separated like we all know they should be.

Mustache

Mustache is a logic-less template syntax. It can be used for HTML, config files, source code - anything. It works by expanding tags in a template using values provided in a hash or object. We call it "logic-less" because there are no if statements, else clauses, or for loops. Instead there are only tags. Some tags are replaced with a value, some nothing, and others a series of values.

Slim Lang

Slim is a template language whose goal is to reduce the view syntax to the essential parts without becoming cryptic. It started as an exercise to see how much could be removed from a standard html template (<, >, closing tags, etc...). As more people took an interest in Slim, the functionality grew and so did the flexibility of the syntax.

RactiveJS

Ractive was originally created at theguardian.com to produce news applications. Ractive takes your Mustache templates and transforms them into a lightweight representation of the DOM – then when your data changes, it intelligently updates the real DOM.

Jinja

It is a full featured template engine for Python. It has full unicode support, an optional integrated sandboxed execution environment, widely used and BSD licensed.

Twig

It is a modern template engine for PHP. It is flexible, fast, and secure. Its syntax originates from Jinja and Django templates.

Hogan.js

Hogan.js is a 3.4k JS templating engine developed at Twitter. Use it as a part of your asset packager to compile templates ahead of time or include it in your browser to handle dynamic templates.

Jsonnet

It is a data templating language for app and tool developers. It is a powerful DSL for elegant description of JSON data.

Related Comparisons

EJS vs Nunjucks: What are the differences?

Introduction

Execution environment: EJS is primarily executed on the server-side, meaning the rendering of templates occurs on the server before the HTML is sent to the client. On the other hand, Nunjucks can be executed both on the server-side and in the browser, providing the flexibility to generate HTML dynamically on either the server or the client side.
Syntax: EJS uses a simple and concise syntax similar to regular JavaScript, making it easier for developers familiar with JavaScript to start using EJS. In contrast, Nunjucks has a more robust and feature-rich syntax that includes extra features like template inheritance, macros, and filters, providing more advanced templating capabilities.
Template inheritance: Nunjucks supports template inheritance, allowing developers to create a base template that can be extended by child templates. This feature facilitates code reusability by allowing common elements like headers and footers to be defined in the base template and inherited by multiple other templates. EJS, on the other hand, does not natively support template inheritance.
Built-in filters: Nunjucks provides a wide range of built-in filters that can be used to modify and format data within templates. These filters include date and time formatting, string manipulation, math calculations, and more. EJS, on the other hand, does not have built-in filters and requires additional code or third-party libraries to achieve similar functionality.
Asynchronous support: Nunjucks has built-in support for asynchronous operations, allowing developers to work with promises and async/await syntax within the templates. This makes it easier to perform asynchronous tasks like making API requests or querying databases directly within the template. EJS, on the other hand, does not have built-in support for asynchronous operations.
Extensibility: Nunjucks allows developers to create custom filters, functions, and tags to extend the templating engine's functionality. This enables developers to write their own logic and integrate it seamlessly into the templates. EJS, on the other hand, has limited extensibility options and does not provide a built-in mechanism for creating custom filters or tags.

In summary, EJS and Nunjucks differ in their execution environment, syntax, template inheritance support, built-in filters, asynchronous support, and extensibility options.

EJS vs Nunjucks

Overview

EJS vs Nunjucks: What are the differences?