gin0115/elmishphp-html

A functional based library for creating HTML in PHP, heavily inspired by the ELM HTML package

1.0.0 2026-04-24 22:49 UTC

Requires

• php: >=8.2.0

Requires (Dev)

• friendsofphp/php-cs-fixer: ^3.0
• phpstan/phpstan: ^2.0
• phpunit/phpunit: ^11.0
• symfony/css-selector: ^7.0
• symfony/dom-crawler: ^7.0
• symfony/finder: ^7.0
• symfony/var-dumper: ^7.0
• yoast/phpunit-polyfills: ^3.0

GPL-2.0-or-later

• Glynn Quelch

• html
• functional
• fp
• elm

README

A functional library for creating HTML in PHP, heavily inspired by Elm's Html package. Each element is a typed value object with __toString — compose them with curried functions, render by stringification.

Why

Erm, next question........ok fine, why not. I really enjoyed ELMs approach to creating HTML and have played around with this idea before (Functional WP Plugin).

Install

composer require gin0115/elmishphp-html

Then the usual require 'vendor/autoload.php' and you're good to go.

How it works

Each HTML tag is a curried function. The first call passes attributes, the second passes children. Every function returns a typed object that knows how to render itself.

use function Gin0115\ElmishPHP\HTML\div;
use function Gin0115\ElmishPHP\HTML\span;
use function Gin0115\ElmishPHP\HTML\p;
use function Gin0115\ElmishPHP\HTML\text;

echo div(['id' => 'wrap', 'class' => 'card'])(
    p()(text('Hello, '), span(['class' => 'name'])(text('world'))),
);

<div id="wrap" class="card"><p>Hello, <span class="name">world</span></p></div>

Elm-style formatting

For longer trees, leading-comma style mirrors elm-format:

div ([ 'id' => 'wrap', 'class' => 'card' ])
    ( p ()
        ( text('Hello, ')
        , span ([ 'class' => 'name' ])(text('world'))
        )
    );

Text content

	escapes?	use for
text('...')	yes	the default for any string
raw('<b>x</b>')	no	pre-rendered HTML you trust
bare 'string'	yes (auto)	shorthand for text('string') as a child

echo div()(text('<script>alert(1)</script>'));
// <div>&lt;script&gt;alert(1)&lt;/script&gt;</div>

echo div()(raw('<b>bold</b>'));
// <div><b>bold</b></div>

Attributes

Attributes are an associative array. Three forms:

div([
    'id'        => 'foo',   // standard key=value — value is HTML-escaped
    'data-flag' => null,    // null value → bare flag attribute
    'data-other',           // positional entry → bare flag attribute
])(text('hi'));

<div id="foo" data-flag data-other>hi</div>

All attribute values are HTML-escaped. Keys are not (they're under your control).

Void elements

Void elements take attributes only — no second call for children:

echo br();                                            // <br>
echo img(['src' => 'logo.png', 'alt' => 'logo']);     // <img src="logo.png" alt="logo">
echo input(['type' => 'text', 'name' => 'q', 'required']);
// <input type="text" name="q" required>

The void set: br, hr, img, input, wbr, col, source, track.

Custom tags via node()

For anything not in the built-in set:

use function Gin0115\ElmishPHP\HTML\node;

echo node('custom-element', ['data-x' => 'y'])(text('whatever'));
// <custom-element data-x="y">whatever</custom-element>

Type hierarchy

Everything renderable shares a small interface tree — useful for categorisation and type-narrowing in your own code:

Renderable extends \Stringable
├── Element
│   ├── BlockElement                                   div, p, h1-h6, ul, blockquote, ...
│   ├── InlineElement                                  span, a, strong, em, br, code, ...
│   ├── SectioningElement extends BlockElement         header, footer, nav, main, ...
│   ├── FormElement                                    form, input, button, select, ...
│   ├── TableElement                                   table, tr, td, th, ...
│   ├── MediaElement                                   img, video, iframe, ...
│   ├── InteractiveElement                             details, summary, dialog
│   └── VoidElement                                    marker on br, hr, img, input, ...
└── TextNode                                           Text, Raw

Every element function returns its concrete typed class (e.g. div(...)(...) returns Gin0115\ElmishPHP\HTML\Element\Div), so you can instanceof BlockElement or pass them around with full type info.

Supported tags

77 standard HTML elements out of the box.

Category	Tags
Block	div, p, h1–h6, pre, blockquote, ul, ol, li, dl, dt, dd, figure, figcaption, hr
Inline	span, a, strong, em, small, b, i, u, mark, code, kbd, samp, sub, sup, time, abbr, cite, q, br, wbr
Sectioning	header, footer, main, nav, section, article, aside
Form	form, fieldset, legend, label, button, select, optgroup, option, textarea, input
Table	table, caption, colgroup, thead, tbody, tfoot, tr, td, th, col
Media	img, iframe, video, audio, canvas, picture, source, track
Interactive	details, summary, dialog

For anything else, use node('tag-name', ...).

Tests

PHPUnit (unit / behaviour):

composer test

Playwright (browser-driven E2E against the kitchen-sink fixtures):

npm install
npm run server:up        # docker container on http://localhost:57893
npm run test:e2e --      # extra playwright flags after --
npm run server:down      # when finished

The kitchen-sink fixture at tests/e2e/views/kitchen-sink.php exercises every category — visit http://localhost:57893/?fixture=kitchen-sink while the server is up.

Requirements

• PHP 8.2+
• (optional) Docker + Node for the e2e suite

License

GPL-2.0-or-later