Quick Start

This guide gets you from installation to a working rendered page in under five minutes.

Config file (recommended)
Fluent API

Install via Composer

composer require wik/lexer

Create lex.config.json

Place this file at your project root. Lex walks up from the current working directory to find it automatically.

lex.config.json

{
  "viewPaths": ["views", "resources/views"],
  "production": false,
  "sandbox": false
}

Write a template

Create views/home.lex:

views/home.lex

<h1>{{ $title }}</h1>

#isset($user)
    <p>Welcome back, {{ $user->name }}!</p>
#endisset

#foreach($posts as $post)
    <article>
        <h2>{{ $loop->iteration }}. {{ $post->title }}</h2>
        #if($loop->first)
            <span class="badge">Latest</span>
        #endif
    </article>
#endforeach

Render it

Call Lexer::fromConfig() from anywhere inside your project — it finds lex.config.json automatically.

use Wik\Lexer\Lexer;

$lexer = Lexer::fromConfig();

echo $lexer->render('home', [
    'title' => 'Hello World',
    'user'  => $user,
    'posts' => $posts,
]);

Install via Composer

composer require wik/lexer

Write a template

Create views/home.lex:

views/home.lex

<h1>{{ $title }}</h1>

#foreach($items as $item)
    <li>{{ $item->name }}</li>
#endforeach

Configure and render

Build the Lexer instance with the fluent API and call render():

use Wik\Lexer\Lexer;

$lexer = (new Lexer())
    ->paths([__DIR__ . '/views']);

echo $lexer->render('home', [
    'title' => 'Hello World',
    'items' => $items,
]);

Template name resolution

Template names use dot notation — dots are converted to directory separators:

Template name	Resolved file
`'home'`	`views/home.lex`
`'layouts.app'`	`views/layouts/app.lex`
`'partials.header'`	`views/partials/header.lex`
`'admin.users.index'`	`views/admin/users/index.lex`

Rendering methods

// Render a named template (dot notation)
// In dev mode, this also injects the debug payload for DevTools
$html = $lexer->render('home', ['title' => 'Hello']);

In development mode, render() automatically injects a __lex_debug__ JSON payload into the HTML response for the Chrome DevTools extension. In production mode (setProduction()), no payload is injected — zero overhead.

Next steps

Template syntax

Learn echo, directives, loops, and includes

Layouts & components

Build pages with layout inheritance and reusable components

Configuration

Explore all configuration options and the fluent API

Production mode

Optimize for production with precompiled templates

Get Started

Template Syntax

Layouts & Components

Configuration & Loaders

Security & Extending

Tooling

Template name resolution

Rendering methods

Next steps

Template syntax

Layouts & components

Configuration

Production mode

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Get Started

Template Syntax

Layouts & Components

Configuration & Loaders

Security & Extending

Tooling

​Template name resolution

​Rendering methods

​Next steps

Template syntax

Layouts & components

Configuration

Production mode

Build docs developers (and LLMs) love

Template name resolution

Rendering methods

Next steps