wip

Author: brendt

docs/1-essentials/02-views.md

@@ -639,6 +639,67 @@ Don't forget to run `composer up` after making changes to your composer.json fil
 
 Note that view files themselves don't need a namespace; this namespace is only here to tell Tempest that `views/` is a directory it should scan. If you want to add a class in the `Views` namespace (like, for example, a [custom view object](/2.x/essentials/views#using-dedicated-view-objects)), then that is possible as well. 
 
+## Tempest View as a standalone engine
+
+Tempest View is also designed to be used as a standalone engine in whatever PHP project you want. Start by requiring `tempest/view`: 
+
+```sh
+composer require tempest/view
+```
+
+As a bare minimum setup, you can create an instance of the renderer by calling `TempestViewRenderer::make()`:
+
+```php
+use Tempest\View\Renderers\TempestViewRenderer;
+use function Tempest\view;
+
+$renderer = TempestViewRenderer::make();
+
+$html = $renderer->render(view('home.view.php', name: 'Brent'));
+```
+
+If, however, you want view component support, you will need to provide a `ViewConfig` object as well:
+
+```php
+use Tempest\View\Renderers\TempestViewRenderer;
+use Tempest\View\ViewConfig;
+
+$config = new ViewConfig()->addViewComponents(
+    __DIR__ . '/components/x-base.view.php',
+    __DIR__ . '/components/x-footer.view.php',
+    __DIR__ . '/components/x-header.view.php',
+);
+
+$renderer = TempestViewRenderer::make($config);
+```
+
+If you want to rely on Tempest's discovery to find view components, you can boot a minimal version of Tempest, and resolve the view renderer from the container:
+
+```php
+use Tempest\Core\Tempest;
+use Tempest\View\ViewRenderer;
+
+$container = Tempest::boot(__DIR__);
+
+$html = $container->get(ViewRenderer::class)->render(
+    view('home.view.php', name: 'Brent')
+);
+```
+
+You can choose whichever way you prefer. Chances are that, if you use the minimal setup without booting Tempest, you'll want to add a custom view component loader. That's up to you to implement then.
+
+### A note on caching
+
+When you're using the minimal setup, view caching can be enabled by passing in a `$cache` paremeter into `TempestViewRenderer::make()`:
+
+```php
+$renderer = TempestViewRenderer::make(
+    cache: true,
+);
+```
+
+It's recommended to turn view caching on in production environments. To clear the view cache, you'll have to manually delete the cache directory, which is located at `./vendor/tempest/view/.tempest/cache`.
+
 ## Using other engines
 
 While Tempest View is simple to use, it currently lacks tooling support from editors and IDEs. You may also simply prefer other templating engines. For these reasons, you may use any other engine of your choice.