simple HTML DSL for lua 5.3

this library returns a table which, when indexed with the name of an HTML tag, provides a function which generates a data structure representing an HTML element. when this data structure is converted to a string, the corresponding HTML is generated.

local h = require "html"

calling a tag's function with no arguments produces a self-closing tag.

source

print(h.hr())

output

<hr />

calling a tag's function with a single array or value argument produces a tag with the children provided in the array. non-table values may appear in the list of children or in its stead. they are converted to a string an escaped.

source

print(h.section{h.h1"foo",h.p"bar"})

output

<section><h1>foo</h1><p>bar</p></section>

calling a tag's function with a single set of key/value pairs as the argument produces a self-closing tag with attributes corresponding to the key/value pairs

source

print(h.meta{charset = "utf-8"})

output

<meta charset="utf-8" />

calling a tag's function with a set of key/value pairs and then an array or value as the arguments produces a tag with attributes corresponding to the key/value pairs.

source

print(h.a({href = "https://example.com"}, "foobar"))

output

<a href="https://example.com">foobar</a>

a table used in a list of children must either be generated from the HTML functions or have a tohtml function or a render function, returning HTML structures or HTML source respectively. a table that is not a set of attributes or an array of element children may not be used as arguments to an HTML function.

source

local db_record = {name = "foobar", id = 256}
setmetatable(db_record, {
    tohtml = function(x)
        return h.a(
            {href = "https://example.com/" .. x.id}, x.name)
    end
})

print(h.p{"search result: ", db_record})

output

<p>search result: <a href="https://example.com/256">foobar</a></p>

the raw function will insert text verbatim into the HTML, unescaped.

source

local html_source = "<marquee>hello</marquee>"
print(h.p{html_source})
print(h.p{h.raw(html_source)})

output

<p>&lt;marquee&gt;hello&lt;/marquee&gt;</p>
<p><marquee>hello</marquee></p>

included with this documentation is example.lua which produces this documenation in HTML via the DSL.