Dynamic Navigation with Mustache Templating

I have created a template with mustache.php and am wanting to dynamically create my navigation based on files within a single folder. I am using codeigniter for this project.

I have a function that fetches the files and turns them into links, this function is called create_front_navigation()

public function create_front_navigation()
{
    $map = directory_map(APPPATH.'views/front/', 1);

    $files = '<ul>';

    foreach($map as $map)
    {
        $files = $files.'<li><a href="#">'.str_replace('.php', '', $map).'</a></li>';
    }

    $files = $files.'</ul>';

    return $files;
}

That function is called from my function that gathers and creates my partials or mustache translations, called create_partials.

public function create_partials()
{
    $partials = array(

        'navigation' => $this->create_front_navigation(),
        'site' => 'SaleBolt',
        'firstname' => 'John',
        'visitorNumber' => '6',

    );

    return $partials;
}

All that information is then called from the function that actually turns the mustache tags into actual words. This function is simply called, render().

public function render($template)
{
    $template = $this->mustache->loadTemplate($template);

    $page = $template->render($this->create_partials());

    echo $page;
}

My issue is this, Instead of rendering the "navigation" as an actual unordered list. Mustache is simply rendering it as text.

So in my browser, I am seeing this:

<ul><li><a href="#">about</a></li><li><a href="#">home</a></li></ul>

Instead of the expected result:

• about
• home

What am I doing wrong here? Does Mustache provide a better way of doing something like this? I am very very new to Mustache and have taken several tutorials just to get this far. Thank you for your help in advance!

By default, Mustache implementations escape HTML. (They do this to protect you against malicious user-submitted content.) You must use a separate variable syntax to unescape a string containing HTML.

See Mustache Tags in the bobthecow/mustache.php documentation:

All variables are HTML escaped by default. If you want to return unescaped HTML, use the triple mustache: {{{ name }}}.

You can also use & to unescape a variable: {{& name }}. This may be useful when changing delimiters.

You haven't posted the template you're using, but you need to modify the variable that contains the HTML (e.g., {{ navigation }} should be {{{ navigation }}}).