Variables (also called personalization tags or merge tags) let you insert personalized data for each recipient, like their first name or most recent purchase. Filters modify how this data appears. 

How to use filters?

You use filters inside double curly braces {{ }} with a pipe |. For example:

You can chain multiple filters, so that the output of one filter is passed to the next. For example:

To insert a variable with filters in a message, you can either:

• Type the variable and filters manually, or

  

• Select an existing variable and edit its syntax in the Advanced settings tab.

  

💬 Insert a default value

default

Inserts a fallback value if a variable is empty.

🔠 Format word case

capfirst

Capitalizes the first character.

title

Capitalizes the first letter of each word.

upper

Converts all characters to uppercase.

lower

Converts all characters to lowercase.

truncatechars

Shortens a string to N characters. Truncated values end with an ellipsis (…) included in the character count.

🔢 Format numbers

floatformat

Rounds float values to a specified number of decimals.

integer

Converts a number in string or floating point format into an integer number.

float

Converts a number in string or integer format into a floating point number.

lang_format

Formats numbers according to a language.

📅 Format date and time

time_parse

Converts a date string into a standard timestamp that can be used with other filters, like date or date_i18n.

When passing your date format as an argument, write the date and time exactly as the reference time would look if it were the value.

date

Converts a timestamp or parsed date into a specified format. Use it with a date parsed via time_parse or with the current time using time_now.

date_i18n

Converts a timestamp or parsed date into a specified format, with the output displayed in a specified language. This filter works like date, but you must specify the language first, followed by the format.

Supported languages are en, fr, it, es, de, and pt.

time_add_date

Adds years, months, and days to a timestamp or parsed date. You must specify the time to add in the order year, month, day.

time_in_location

Converts a timestamp or parsed date to a specified timezone. You must specify the timezone in the format location/timezone.

time_add_duration

Adds hours, minutes, and seconds to a timestamp or parsed date. You must specify the value in the format h,m,s and pass at least one value (hour, minute or second) in the filter.

time_unix

Converts a time value to Unix timestamp in seconds.

time_unix_nano

Converts a time value to Unix timestamp in nanoseconds.

🧑‍💻 Encode or encrypt data

base64_encode or decode

Encodes or decodes base 64:

• base64_decode decodes a string to a []byte
• base64_encode encodes a []byte to a string

The base64_encode and decode filters can take an optional encoding parameter:

• std: normal base64 encoding.
• raw_std: normal base64 encoding, without the = padding characters.
• url: URL safe version of base64 encoding, + and / are replaced with - and _ respectively.
• raw_url: a combination of raw and url.

aes_128, 192, or 256

Encrypts a value. For example, you can use this filter to send encrypted contact information in a URL, such as an email address or an ID.

The AES variant used depends on the length of the provided key:

For example, for the AES-256 variant, the variable has to be formatted as {{ contact.ATTRIBUTE | aes_256:"key" }}, where the key:

• Has to be 32 digits.
• Has to be randomly generated.
• Has to be persisted on your end to decrypt the original value.

By default, if no encoding parameter is added, base64 std will be used. Otherwise, it also supports:

• raw_std: normal base64 encoding, without the = padding characters.
• url: URL safe version of base64 encoding, + and / are replaced with - and _ respectively.
• raw_url: a combination of raw and url.

🔎 Other filters

first

Returns the first item of a sequence, a mapping, or a string.

join

Combines the items in an array into a single string using the argument as a separator.

The separator between elements is empty by default. You may define it with the optional first parameter.

last

Returns the last item of a sequence, a mapping, or a string.

length

Returns the number of items of a sequence or a mapping, or the length of a string.

safe

Marks a string as not requiring further HTML escaping prior to output.

Without the safe filter, the HTML tags would be displayed as a normal string in the recipient’s email: "<p>This is my test sentence</p>" or "Hello from <b>Brevo</b>, nice to have you here".

slice

Extracts a slice of a sequence, a mapping, or a string.

This filter may be configured to:

In each example, consider that your array contains the following: ["a","b","c","d","e","f","g","h"...].

verbatim

In Brevo, variables are written using double curly brackets like {{ params.property }}. When you include double curly brackets like {{ this }} in your email, Brevo treats it as a template element.

To display {{ }} as plain text in your email, wrap the content in a {% verbatim %} block:

autoescape

By default, Brevo escapes all variable content, including HTML and JavaScript. This means that if your variable contains HTML (e.g., <h1>My title</h1>), it will be displayed as plain text rather than rendered as HTML.

To allow HTML rendering, you need to disable auto-escaping using the {% autoescape off %} tag. Wrap the variable in this block and close it with {% endautoescape %}:

{% autoescape off %}{{ params.my_html }}{% endautoescape %}

📖 Additional resources

Brevo Template Language is based on Pongo2, which is a re-implementation of Django in Go (a programming language).

All supported tags

autoescape, comment, cycle, filter, firstof, for, if, ifchanged, now, set, spaceless, templatetag, with.

All supported filters

escape, safe, escapejs, add, addslashes, capfirst, center, cut, date, default, default_if_none, divisibleby, first, floatformat, get_digit, iriencode, join, last, length, length_is, linebreaks, linebreaksbr, linenumbers, ljust, lower, make_list, phone2numeric, pluralize, random, removetags, rjust, slice, stringformat, striptags, time, title, truncatechars, truncatechars_html, truncatewords, truncatewords_html, upper, urlencode, urlize, urlizetrunc, wordcount, wordwrap, yesno.

All supported filters for hash algorithms

hash_md5, hash_sha256, hash_sha256_224, hash_sha512, hash_sha512_224, hash_sha512_256, hash_sha512_384, hash_sha3_224, hash_sha3_256, hash_sha3_384, hash_sha3_512.

🤔 Have a question?

If you have a question, feel free to contact our support team by creating a ticket from your account. If you don't have an account yet, you can contact us here.

If you’re looking for help with a project using Brevo, we can match you with the right certified Brevo Agency partner.