Question: I have been trying to use nested templates in Go, however the Examples or help documents are not helping me, and examples in 3 other blogs are not what I'm looking for (one is close and maybe the only way but I want to make sure)

OK, so my code is for App Engine, in here I will be doing an `urlfetch` to a server, and then I want to show some results, like the `Response`, headers, and body.

```
const statusTemplate = `
{{define "RT"}}
Status      - {{.Status}}
Proto       - {{.Proto}}
{{end}}
{{define "HT"}}
{{range $key, $val := .}}
{{$key}} - {{$val}}
{{end}}
{{end}}
{{define "BT"}}
{{.}}
{{end}}
{{define "MT"}}
<html>
    <body>
        <pre>
-- Response --
{{template "RT"}}

--  Header  --
{{template "HT"}}

--   Body   --
{{template "BT"}}
        </pre>
    </body>
</html>
{{end}}
{{template "MT"}}`

func showStatus(w http.ResponseWriterm r *http.Request) {
    /*
     *  code to get:
     *  resp as http.Response
     *  header as a map with the header values
     *  body as an string wit the contents
     */
    t := template.Must(template.New("status").Parse(statusTemplate)
    t.ExecuteTemplate(w, "RT", resp)
    t.ExecuteTemplate(w, "HT", header)
    t.ExecuteTemplate(w, "BT", body)
    t.Execute(w, nil)
}

```

My code actually outputs the RT, HT, and BT templates with the correct values, and then it outputs the MT template empty (MT stands for main template).

So... How can I use nested forms from a string variable so that an example as the above works?

Answer: 
I think the approach you try with nested templates is wrong. If you want `.` to be defined inside a nested template, you have to supply an argument to the call to the nested template, just as you do with the `ExecuteTemplate` function:

```
{{define "RT"}}
Status      - {{.Status}}
Proto       - {{.Proto}}
{{end}}
{{define "HT"}}
{{range $key, $val := .}}
{{$key}} - {{$val}}
{{end}}
{{end}}
{{define "BT"}}
{{.}}
{{end}}
{{define "MT"}}
<html>
    <body>
        <pre>
-- Response --
{{template "RT" .Resp}}

--  Header  --
{{template "HT" .Header}}

--   Body   --
{{template "BT" .Body}}
        </pre>
    </body>
</html>
{{end}}
{{template "MT"}}

```

The important part you seem to miss is that templates *do not* encapsulate state. When you execute a template, the engine evaluates the template for the given argument and then writes out the generated text. It does not save the argument or anything that was generated for future invocations.

Documentation
-------------

Relevant part of the [documentation](http://golang.org/pkg/text/template):

> 
> ### Actions
> 
> 
> Here is the list of actions. "Arguments" and "pipelines" are
>  evaluations of data, defined in detail below. 
> 
> 
> 
> ```
> ...
> 
> {{template "name"}}
>   The template with the specified name is executed with nil data.
> 
> {{template "name" pipeline}}
>   The template with the specified name is executed with dot set
>   to the value of the pipeline.
> 
> ...
> 
> ```
> 
> 

I hope this clears up things.
have a look at this tutorial:  

<http://javatogo.blogspot.com>

there it is explained how to use nested templates.