title: Thymeleaf
text: # Thymeleaf
  
  Thymeleaf is a Java XML/XHTML/HTML5 template engine that can work both in web (servlet-based) and non-web environments. It is better suited for serving XHTML/HTML5 at the view layer of MVC-based web applications, but it can process any XML file even in offline environments. It provides full Spring Framework integration.
  
  In web applications Thymeleaf aims to be a complete substitute for JavaServer Pages (JSP), and implements the concept of Natural Templates: template files that can be directly opened in browsers and that still display correctly as web pages.
  
  Thymeleaf is open-source software, licensed under the Apache License 2.0.
  
  ## Features
  
  From the project's website:
  
  * Java template engine for XML, XHTML and HTML5.
  * Works both in web and non-web (offline) environments. No hard dependency on the Servlet API.
  * Based on modular feature sets called dialects.
     * Dialect features (e.g.: evaluation, iteration, etc.) are applied by linking them to template's tags and/or attributes.
     * Two dialects available out-of-the-box: Standard and SpringStandard (for Spring MVC apps, same syntax as Standard).
     * Developers can extend and create custom dialects.
  * Several template modes:
     * XML: validating against a DTD or not.
     * XHTML 1.0 and 1.1: validating against standard DTDs or not.
     * HTML5: both XML-formed code and legacy-based HTML5. Legacy non-XML code will be automatically cleaned and converted to XML form.
  * Full (and extensible) internationalization support.
  * Configurable, high performance parsed template cache that reduces input/output to the minimum.
  * Automatic DOCTYPE translations –from template DTD to result DTD– for (optional) validation of both template and result code.
  * Extremely extensible: can be used as a template engine framework if needed.
  * Complete documentation including several example applications.
  
  ## Thymeleaf example
  
  The following example produces an HTML5 table with rows for each item of a List<Product> variable called allProducts.
  
  This piece of code includes:
  
  * Internationalization expressions: #{ ... } rh
  * Variable/model-attribute evaluation expressions: ${ ... }
  * Utility functions: #numbers.formatDecimal( ... )
  
  Also, this fragment of (X)HTML code can be perfectly displayed by a browser as a prototype, without being processed at all: it is a natural template.
  
  