The Ghostly template/print formatter engine

Ghostly is a template engine/print formatter that can be used to render HTML or PDF documents, images and other kinds of documents from a data model or parameter set.

The templates are just a web page with a very simple API that should be implemented, which means that any normal front-end technology can be used for the actual rendering. This also makes the templates incredibly powerful, much more so than traditional template languages or XSLT stylesheets.

The Ghostly Engine is available as a Node.js module with a really simple API that you can embed in your own project. There is also a command line tool that can either render documents from the command line or start a web service that accepts HTTP requests, enabling use from any language or environment. This tool is also available as a ready-made Docker image.

The Ghostly Runtime is a small client-side library that defines the protocol required to drive the template.

Ghostly version 1 has been used in production for several years. Version 2 is a major rewrite which uses a modern headless browser engine and adds support for generating arbitrary attachments as part of the rendering operation.

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