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Handlebars VS Jinja2

Compare Handlebars VS Jinja2 and see what are their differences

Handlebars logo Handlebars

Handlebars is a JavaScript template library that is, more or less, based on ...

Jinja2 logo Jinja2

Jinja2 is a template engine written in Python.
  • Handlebars Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-06-28
  • Jinja2 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-24

Handlebars features and specs

  • Simplicity
    Handlebars provides a straightforward and easy-to-learn syntax for templating, making it accessible for developers with varying levels of experience.
  • Logic-less Templates
    Encourages the separation of logic and design by only allowing minimal logic in templates. This promotes a cleaner code base and separation of concerns.
  • Extensibility
    Handlebars allows for custom helpers and partials which enable extending the templating functionality as needed.
  • Precompilation
    Templates can be precompiled, improving performance by reducing client-side parsing and rendering time.
  • Wide Adoption and Community Support
    As a popular templating engine, Handlebars has a large community of users and contributors, which provides abundant resources, plugins, and support.

Possible disadvantages of Handlebars

  • Limited Logic
    The logic-less nature of Handlebars means it supports only very basic conditionals and loops, which can be limiting for complex scenarios.
  • Verbosity
    Handlebars templates can become verbose, especially when using custom helpers or partials extensively.
  • Initial Learning Curve
    For developers coming from more logic-oriented templating engines, adjusting to Handlebars' logic-less paradigm can take some effort.
  • Dependency Management
    In larger projects, managing dependencies between templates, partials, and helpers can become complex and cumbersome.
  • Lack of Reactivity
    Handlebars does not include built-in support for data reactivity, making it less suitable for dynamic, real-time updates compared to modern frameworks like React or Vue.

Jinja2 features and specs

  • Template Inheritance
    Jinja2 supports template inheritance, allowing developers to create base templates that can be extended by other templates, promoting reusability and reducing redundancy.
  • Easy to Use
    Jinja2 has a simple syntax that is easy to learn, making it accessible for developers with varying levels of experience.
  • Extensible
    Jinja2 can be easily extended with custom filters and tests, allowing developers to enhance its functionality to suit specific application needs.
  • Safe by Default
    The template engine auto-escapes variables to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, enhancing security in web applications.
  • Sandboxed Environment
    Jinja2 runs code in a sandboxed environment, ensuring that user-inputted templates can be executed safely without compromising the server.

Possible disadvantages of Jinja2

  • Complex Logic Handling
    Jinja2 is not optimized for handling complex logic within templates, which can lead to messy and hard-to-maintain code if misused.
  • Limited Debugging
    Debugging Jinja2 templates can be challenging because error outputs are not always detailed, making it difficult to identify issues in large templates.
  • Performance Overhead
    Template rendering with Jinja2 might introduce performance overhead, which could impact the performance of heavily templated applications.
  • Learning Curve for Advanced Features
    While basic usage is simple, mastering Jinja2's advanced features, such as custom filters and macros, can have a significant learning curve.

Handlebars videos

MTB Handlebars: Our Top 5 Picks for 2018!

More videos:

  • Review - Roland Sands Handlebars Review at RevZilla.com
  • Review - KST Kustoms Handlebars Review

Jinja2 videos

Python and Jinja2 Cisco Network Automation

More videos:

  • Review - Python and Flask - Diving into Jinja2

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Handlebars and Jinja2)
Javascript UI Libraries
63 63%
37% 37
Development
56 56%
44% 44
Tool
54 54%
46% 46
Front-End Frameworks
67 67%
33% 33

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Handlebars seems to be a lot more popular than Jinja2. While we know about 65 links to Handlebars, we've tracked only 4 mentions of Jinja2. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Handlebars mentions (65)

  • Chapter 7: HTML part two
    For a more robust approach, we'd probably need to install a templating language of some kind, such as Twig, EJS, Handlebars, Pug or Mustache (this is not a complete list!). Reading the documentation for posthtml-modules, you'll notice it doesn't mention package.json or any of the approaches we've used in this guide. Instead, the examples are in JavaScript and we've advised to add this to our Node application. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • How to send emails using Express and NodeJS
    As suggested by a teammate, I found out that I'll need to create the template in a different file and then replace the variables in it using some utility. So, again after searching for some packages, I figured that Handlebars would be the best solution for our problem. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • The Features of Front-end UI Components
    In dynamic web pages, especially when using template engines such as Mustache and Handlebars or libraries/frameworks such as React and Vue, the final content structure is basically generated by JS, which strengthens JS and weakens the control of HTML over the content structure. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Make Custom Handlebar Helpers in Ghost!
    In this variable, we have the response from the Ghost instance as the full HTML of the page. Imagine that this response is the homepage of your Ghost instance. The HTML content will also include our plain text {{hello_world}}, which is displayed as plain text. If our custom helper is in this form, we can compile it using Handlebars.js (https://handlebarsjs.com/) in our middleware. Remember to install the library... - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • htmx and ExpressJS
    It is a novel experience to say the least for me. I mean yes I have been using Handlebars, pug, and other templating engines but this is novel in how it changed my perspective about HTML (Just read their motivation in htmx.org). - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
View more

Jinja2 mentions (4)

  • fetching list elements using jinja2 under flask app
    I have a list say list[a][b] of length 10.I want to print from list[0][b] to list[10][b] and use it in jinja2 template. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Jinja2: How to create multidimensional javascript array?
    I am using Flask with Jinja2 as templating language. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Issue a POST request with url_for in Flask
    I'm trying to issue a POST request within a Jinja template in Flask. However, parameters are passed in via GET by default, and this particular method only accepts POST requests. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Build a CRUD application with Flask and SQLAlchemy
    For our application above, we defined the string "My flask app" within our Python code. This was okay, as it was a single line, but as our front-end code grows, it will be cumbersome to define everything in our Python file. Flask allows for separation of concerns though so-called "templates." These are usually .html files, with some Python logic mixed in through the Jinja template engine language. Let's add a... - Source: dev.to / almost 4 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Handlebars and Jinja2, you can also consider the following products

EJS - An open source JavaScript Template library.

Pug - Pug is a robust, elegant, feature rich template engine for Node.js

jquery-template - A template plugin for jQuery. Allows templating without cluttering JavaScript code with markup.

NANO – jQuery Template Engine - NANO is a simple and open-source jQuery Template Engine developed by trix.pl and released under the MIT License.

mustache - Mustache is a simple web template system with implementations available for ActionScript, C++...

Nunjucks - Nunjucks offers node templates with inheritance, asynchronous control.