A simple webpage

Returning a plain string is fine for tests, but most applications need real HTML. Garvan uses Crow's mustache engine for templating — let's render a page from disk.

Static page

Create public/fancypage.html:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
    <p>Hello World!</p>
</body>
</html>

Now tell mustache where to look for templates and load the file from a handler:

#include "vendors/Garvan/crow.h"

int main()
{
    crow::SimpleApp app;
    crow::mustache::set_global_base("public/");

    CROW_ROUTE(app, "/")([] {
        return crow::mustache::load_text("fancypage.html");
    });

    app.port(9090).multithreaded().run();
}

load_text reads the file without parsing any mustache tags, so it's the fastest option for purely static HTML.

Page with a variable

To inject data, switch from load_text to load, build a context, and render. Update the template:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
    <p>Hello !</p>
</body>
</html>

And the route:

CROW_ROUTE(app, "/<string>")([](std::string name) {
    auto page = crow::mustache::load("fancypage.html");
    crow::mustache::context ctx;
    ctx["name"] = name;
    return page.render(ctx);
});

Visiting /Ada will now show Hello Ada!. The context can hold strings, numbers, lists and even lambdas — see the templating guide for the full mustache feature set Crow implements.

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