CakePan is a CakePHP view helper that renders Mustache templates. It will also load and process sub-templates!

Portability and scalability! If you have an app that uses lots of front-end coding, you only have to write your templates once. Mustache templates can be rendered in PHP, Javascript, Ruby, Scala, even C++! If you want to move to or from some other framework (Rails, Grails, Lithium etc.), you can be sure that your views and design won't have to be re-built.

For scalability, when the time comes, you can use templates with a more powerful engine like Scala, or just send JSON from any source, and render with Javascript.

CakePan should be added to your project the same as any other CakePHP View Helper. See the Cakebook's View Helpers documentation for more information.

If you want to add Mustache support globally, add it to your AppController

class AppController extends Controller {
	...
	public $helpers = array('Mustache');
	...
}

See the Mustache manual: http://mustache.github.com/

Your Mustache templates should all be in the /app/View/Elements/ directory, with a .mustache extension.

/app/View/Elements/post.mustache

{{#Post}}
<h2>{{title}}</h2\>
<div>
	{{text}}
</div>
{{/Post}}

All the variable set by the controller are available, and merged with values passed into $params.

$params = array(
	'title' => 'Show me the bacon!',
	'text' => 'Bacon ipsum dolor sit amet fatback pig swine...'
);

$this->Mustache->render('template_name', $params)

Sub-templates should follow the same naming convention. Mustache will pass the variables to the sub-template in the context that it's called. For example, a nested template for a blog post with comments might look like:

/app/View/Elements/posts/post.mustache:

{{#Post}}
<h2>{{title}}</h2\>
<div>
	{{text}}
</div>
{{/Post}}
{{#Comment}}
	{{>post/comment}}
{{/Comment}}

/app/View/Elements/posts/comment.mustache:

<div>
<h3>{{#User}}{{name}}{{/User}} said: </h3>
<p>{{text}}</p>
</div>