I'm trying to find an HTML templating solution that will work both on my ASP.NET MVC application (.NET 4, IIS 7.5) and in the browser. The reason is to the the same code to render HTML both on the server (performance, outputting to mobile, etc) or on the browser (refreshing data via AJAX). This is not a new problem, but I am wondering if current technology trends have changed the answer.

A couple of ideas I am considering:

• Use mustache templates with are available in both JavaScript and .NET.
• Use a port of the Razor View Engine to JavaScript like considered in Javascript + Razor == Jazor?.
• Take a position like Micro Templates Are Dead... forget about it and just use JavaScript (IronJS?) and the DOM (jsdom)

ASP.NET MVC View Engine Comparison looked relavent, but there is no mention of mustache.

Update: The client-side templating throwdown: mustache, handlebars, dust.js, and more from LinkedIn Engineering rates mustache in it's top four, with it being the only one with native .NET rendering (vs requiring server-side JavaScript to render on the server).

I'm trying to find an HTML templating solution that will work both on my ASP.NET MVC application (.NET 4, IIS 7.5) and in the browser. The reason is to the the same code to render HTML both on the server (performance, outputting to mobile, etc) or on the browser (refreshing data via AJAX). This is not a new problem, but I am wondering if current technology trends have changed the answer.

A couple of ideas I am considering:

• Use mustache templates with are available in both JavaScript and .NET.
• Use a port of the Razor View Engine to JavaScript like considered in Javascript + Razor == Jazor?.
• Take a position like Micro Templates Are Dead... forget about it and just use JavaScript (IronJS?) and the DOM (jsdom)

ASP.NET MVC View Engine Comparison looked relavent, but there is no mention of mustache.

Update: The client-side templating throwdown: mustache, handlebars, dust.js, and more from LinkedIn Engineering rates mustache in it's top four, with it being the only one with native .NET rendering (vs requiring server-side JavaScript to render on the server).

• javascript
• asp-mvc
• razor
• template-engine
• mustache

2 Answers 2

I would highly remend mustache for your application. You have already mentioned abt the fact that it has a server side rendering engine and also a strong munity backing. Apart from this the major reason why I would remend mustache is for Performance of the templating engine. I have played around with the same and none of the other JS templating solution could match the performance of mustache.

What I would like more is documentation around the library but you should be able to work around this.

I have done that using Spark view engine, it is quite good with the template where you can use it from and js.