⚡️ A high-performance templating engine & markup language
Fast • Compiled • Source-to-Source • Interpreter
nimble install tim / npm install @openpeeps/tim
This is Tim • Red Hiney • The Great Pantzini! • A powerful front-end engine designed to boost developer productivity. It combines a high-performance templating engine with a versatile micro programming language, enabling developers to create dynamic web applications with ease.
- ⚡️ Fast, Compiled, Clean syntax
- Template engine with support for layouts, partials and views
- Source-to-Source transpilation to Lua, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, PHP and Nim lang
- Standard Library with many built-in utilities for web development
- 📦 Built-in Package Manager for easy installation of third-party packages
- 🔁 Built-in Browser Sync & Reload
- Built-in HTTP Server and WebSocket support
- Available natively as a Node.js NAPI module, PHP extension, Python module, Ruby gem, and Lua rock
- SPA Awareness with support for client-side routing and dynamic content updates
- 👑 Written in Nim language
Here is a simple example of Tim Engine's syntax for creating a basic web page template:
var title = "Welcome to Tim Engine"
div.container > div.row > div.col-12
h1.display-4.fw-bold: $title // passing variable to template
p.lead: "Tim Engine is a powerful templating engine and scripting language for developers."
a.btn.btn-primary.px-4.rounded-3
href="https://example.com": "Get Started"
Find more about Tim's syntax and features here https://tim.openpeeps.dev/language/syntax
To get started with Tim Engine, you can install it using Nimble, or download the latest release from GitHub. For detailed installation instructions and usage examples, please refer to the Official Documentation.
Tim comes with a command-line interface application that wraps the core engine and provides a way to compile and run templates directly from the terminal. Additionally, the CLI app can be used to generate AST representation of templates, manage Tim packages using the built-in package manager and also use Tim Engine at runtime to serve templates via the built-in HTTP server. Crazy!
Use the built-in HTTP server to compile and serve templates at runtime. Basically, you can use Tim Engine as a web server to serve dynamic content. The HTTP server supports routing, middleware, and WebSocket connections.
The CLI app supports source-to-source transpilation to multiple target languages: Lua, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, PHP and Nim. Note that all transpilation targets are currently in very early stages of development and may not yet be fully functional or stable.
Note
The primary focus of the project is currently on the core templating engine and its features, with transpilation capabilities being developed incrementally over time.
Tim is written in Nim lang, this allows it to be compiled to a native extension for other programming languages. Currently, Tim Engine is available as a Node.js NAPI module, PHP extension, Python module, Ruby gem, and Lua rock. Check the example directory for usage examples
Note
The native extension support is still in early stages of development and may not yet be fully functional or stable. Publishing Tim via Package Registries for the supported languages is also a work in progress and may not yet be available for all target languages.
Showcasing Tim's virtual machine (VM) when executing pre-compiled templates. The benchmarks include various scenarios such as rendering HTML, dynamic data, conditionals, loops, and more.
Benchmark Iterations Total (ms) Mean (µs) Ops/sec
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
VM — static HTML 10000 30.094 3.009 332289.
VM — dynamic data 10000 39.361 3.936 254060.
VM — conditionals (true) 10000 22.154 2.215 451380.
VM — conditionals (false) 10000 22.737 2.274 439810.
VM — loops (10 items) 10000 68.805 6.880 145339.
VM — loops (1000 items) 1000 418.102 418.102 2392.
VM — string stdlib 10000 23.358 2.336 428125.
VM — deep nesting 10000 58.691 5.869 170384.
VM — mixed template 5000 177.691 35.538 28139.
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
While these benchmarks shows the full pipeline (lexing, parsing > ast > codegen > vm execution) for the same templates, which includes the overhead of parsing and code generation, it gives a more realistic picture of the overall performance of the engine when rendering templates without a prepared VM bytecode.
Benchmark Iterations Total (ms) Mean (µs) Ops/sec
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Parsing — small 10000 21.169 2.117 472396.
Parsing — complex 5000 100.764 20.153 49621.
Full pipeline — static 2000 607.031 303.515 3295.
Full pipeline — dynamic 2000 627.298 313.649 3188.
Conditionals — true 2000 609.800 304.900 3280.
Conditionals — false 2000 610.486 305.243 3276.
Loops — 10 items 1000 321.576 321.576 3110.
Loops — 1000 items 50 37.672 753.439 1327.
String stdlib 1000 303.507 303.507 3295.
Deep nesting 500 161.140 322.281 3103.
Mixed template 500 205.136 410.272 2437.
Now, let's run some HTTP server benchmarks to see how Tim performs when serving templates over HTTP. We'll use the wrk and bombardier tools to simulate concurrent requests and measure the throughput and latency of the server.
- wrk benchmark
Running 10s test @ http://localhost:8000
2 threads and 125 connections
Thread Stats Avg Stdev Max +/- Stdev
Latency 3.45ms 448.71us 23.88ms 99.22%
Req/Sec 18.08k 375.10 18.62k 96.00%
359749 requests in 10.00s, 2.27GB read
Requests/sec: 35969.58
Transfer/sec: 232.30MB
- bombardier benchmark
Bombarding http://localhost:8000 for 10s using 125 connection(s)
Statistics Avg Stdev Max
Reqs/sec 36487.04 1624.69 38432.07
Latency 3.42ms 352.59us 28.41ms
HTTP codes:
1xx - 0, 2xx - 364958, 3xx - 0, 4xx - 0, 5xx - 0
others - 0
Throughput: 237.78MB/s
Amazing! The built-in webserver is powered by Supranim using the PowPow backend.
This project uses changer to manage its changelog. See the CHANGELOG.md file for the release history.
- Update Tim Engine for Node.js runtime
- Build and publish Tim extension package for PHP, Lua, Python and Ruby
- Sunday Publishing Platform - A modern, open-source publishing platform built with Tim Engine
- 🐛 Found a bug? Create a new Issue
- 👋 Wanna help? Fork it!
- 🎉 Spread the word! Tell your friends about Tim Engine
- ⚽️ Play with Tim Engine in your next web-project
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Tim Engine | LGPLv3 license. Made by Humans from OpenPeeps.
Copyright © 2026 OpenPeeps & Contributors — All rights reserved.