Cheetah Users' Guide

Edited by Mike Orr and Tavis Rudd

[email protected]

Contents
1 Introduction
- 1.1 Who should read this Guide?
- 1.2 What is Cheetah?
- 1.3 What is the philosophy behind Cheetah?
  - 1.3.1 Why Cheetah doesn't use HTML-style tags
- 1.4 Give me an example!
- 1.5 Give me an example of a Webware servlet!
- 1.6 How mature is Cheetah?
- 1.7 Where can I get news?
- 1.8 How can I contribute?
- 1.9 Acknowledgements
- 1.10 License
2 Vocabulary
3 Getting Started
- 3.1 Requirements
- 3.2 Installation
- 3.3 Files
- 3.4 Uninstalling
- 3.5 The 'cheetah' command
- 3.6 Testing your installation
- 3.7 Quickstart tutorial
4 How Cheetah Works
- 4.1 Constructing Template Objects
- 4.2 ``cheetah compile'' and .py template modules
- 4.3 ``cheetah fill''
- 4.4 Some trivia about .py template modules
- 4.5 Running a .py template module as a standalone program
- 4.6 Object-Oriented Documents
5 Language Overview
- 5.1 Language Constructs - Summary
- 5.2 Placeholder Syntax Rules
- 5.3 Where can you use placeholders?
- 5.4 Are all those dollar signs really necessary?
- 5.5 NameMapper Syntax
- 5.6 Namespace cascading and the searchList
- 5.7 Missing Values
- 5.8 Directive Syntax Rules
  - 5.8.1 Directive closures and whitespace handling
6 Comments
- 6.1 Docstring Comments
- 6.2 Header Comments
7 Generating, Caching and Filtering Output
- 7.1 Output from complex expressions: #echo
- 7.2 Executing expressions without output: #silent
- 7.3 One-line #if
- 7.4 Caching Output
  - 7.4.1 Caching individual placeholders
  - 7.4.2 Caching entire regions
- 7.5 #raw
- 7.6 #include
- 7.7 #slurp
- 7.8 #indent
- 7.9 Ouput Filtering and #filter
8 Import, Inheritance, Declaration and Assignment
- 8.1 #import and #from directives
- 8.2 #extends
- 8.3 #implements
- 8.4 #set
- 8.5 #del
- 8.6 #attr
- 8.7 #def
- 8.8 #block ... #end block
9 Flow Control
- 9.1 #for ... #end for
- 9.2 #repeat ... #end repeat
- 9.3 #while ... #end while
- 9.4 #if ... #else if ... #else ... #end if
- 9.5 #unless ... #end unless
- 9.6 #break and #continue
- 9.7 #pass
- 9.8 #stop
- 9.9 #return
10 Error Handling
- 10.1 #try ... #except ... #end try, #finally, and #assert
- 10.2 #errorCatcher and ErrorCatcher objects
11 Instructions to the Parser/Compiler
- 11.1 #breakpoint
- 11.2 #compiler-settings
12 Fine Control over Cheetah-generated Python modules
- 12.1 Setting the source code encoding: #encoding
- 12.2 Setting the sh-bang: #shBang
13 Tips, Tricks and Troubleshooting
- 13.1 Placeholder Tips
- 13.2 Diagnostic Output
- 13.3 When to use Python methods
- 13.4 Calling superclass methods, and why you have to
- 13.5 All methods
- 13.6 Optimizing templates
- 13.7 PSP-style tags
- 13.8 Makefiles
- 13.9 Using Cheetah in a Multi-Threaded Application
- 13.10 Using Cheetah with gettext
14 Using Cheetah with Webware
- 14.1 Installing Cheetah on a Webware system
- 14.2 Containment vs Inheritance
  - 14.2.1 The Containment Approach
  - 14.2.2 The Inheritance Approach
- 14.3 Site frameworks
- 14.4 Directory structure
- 14.5 Initializing your template-servlet with Python code
- 14.6 Form processing
- 14.7 Form input, cookies, session variables and web server variables
  - 14.7.1 .webInput()
- 14.8 More examples
- 14.9 Other Tips
15 non-Webware HTML output
- 15.1 Static HTML Pages
- 15.2 CGI scripts
16 Non-HTML Output
- 16.1 Python source code
17 Batteries included: templates and other libraries
- 17.1 ErrorCatchers
- 17.2 FileUtils
- 17.3 Filters
- 17.4 SettingsManager
- 17.5 Templates
- 17.6 Tools
- 17.7 Utils
  - 17.7.1 Cheetah.Templates.SkeletonPage
18 Visual Editors
A. Useful Web Links
- A..1 Cheetah Links
- A..2 Third-party Cheetah Stuff
- A..3 Webware Links
- A..4 Python Links
- A..5 Other Useful Links
B. Examples
- B..1 Syntax examples
- B..2 Webware Examples
C. Cheetah vs. Other Template Engines
- C..1 Which features are unique to Cheetah
- C..2 Cheetah vs. Velocity
- C..3 Cheetah vs. WebMacro
- C..4 Cheetah vs. Zope's DTML
- C..5 Cheetah vs. Zope Page Templates
- C..6 Cheetah vs. PHP's Smarty templates
- C..7 Cheetah vs. PHPLib's Template class
- C..8 Cheetah vs. PSP, PHP, ASP, JSP, Embperl, etc.
D. Optik license
About this document ...