Show HN: I built a web framework in C

Hacker News (score: 131)
Found: October 09, 2025
ID: 1795

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Show HN: I built a web framework in C

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Show HN: JavaScript-free (X)HTML Includes

Show HN: JavaScript-free (X)HTML Includes (spoiler: its XSLT)<p>I&#x27;ve been working on a little demo for how to avoid copy-pasting header&#x2F;footer boilerplate on a simple static webpage. My goal is to approximate the experience of Jekyll&#x2F;Hugo but eliminate the need for a build step before publishing. This demo shows how to get basic templating features with XSL so you could write a blog post which looks like<p><pre><code> &lt;?xml version=&quot;1.0&quot;?&gt; &lt;?xml-stylesheet type=&quot;text&#x2F;xsl&quot; href=&quot;&#x2F;template.xsl&quot;?&gt; &lt;page&gt; &lt;title&gt;My Article&lt;&#x2F;title&gt; &lt;content&gt; some content &lt;ul&gt; &lt;li&gt;hello&lt;&#x2F;li&gt; &lt;li&gt;hello&lt;&#x2F;li&gt; &lt;&#x2F;ul&gt; &lt;&#x2F;content&gt; &lt;&#x2F;page&gt; </code></pre> Some properties which set this approach apart from other methods:<p><pre><code> - no build step (no need to setup Jekyll on the client or configure Github&#x2F;Gitlab actions) - works on any webserver (e.g. as opposed to server-side includes, actions) - normal looking URLs (e.g. `example.com&#x2F;foobar` as opposed to `example.com&#x2F;#page=foobar`) </code></pre> There&#x27;s been some talk about removing XSLT support from the HTML spec [0], so I figured I would show this proof of concept while it still works.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=44952185">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=44952185</a><p>See also: grug-brain XSLT <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=44393817">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=44393817</a>

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