HAML (HTML Abstraction Markup Language) - HTML Preprocessors

Haml is a templating engine for HTML. It's designed to make it both easier and more pleasant to write HTML documents, by eliminating redundancy, reflecting the underlying structure that the document represents, and providing an elegant syntax that's both powerful and easy to understand.

Basic Usage

Haml can be used from the command line or as part of a Ruby web framework. The first step is to install the gem:

gem install haml

After you write some Haml, you can run

haml document.haml

to compile it to HTML. For more information on these commands, check out

haml --help

Formatting

The most basic element of Haml is a shorthand for creating HTML:

%tagname{:attr1 => 'value1', :attr2 => 'value2'} Contents

No end-tag is needed; Haml handles that automatically. If you prefer HTML-style attributes, you can also use:

%tagname(attr1='value1' attr2='value2') Contents

Adding class and id attributes is even easier. Haml uses the same syntax as the CSS that styles the document:

%tagname#id.class