There is no builtin support for storing the result of a template in a template variable, only for the inclusion of the result.
But you can register custom functions with any complex functionality you want. You may register a GetOutput function which would execute a template identified by its name, and it could return the result as a string, which you can store in a template variable.
Example doing this:
func main() {
t := template.New("")
t = template.Must(t.Funcs(template.FuncMap{
"GetOutput": func(name string) (string, error) {
buf := &bytes.Buffer{}
err := t.ExecuteTemplate(buf, name, nil)
return buf.String(), err
},
}).Parse(src))
if err := t.ExecuteTemplate(os.Stdout, "T2", nil); err != nil {
panic(err)
}
}
const src = `
{{define "T1"}}{{ printf "%s-%s" "complex" "stuff" }}{{end}}
{{define "T2"}}
{{ $t1Out := (GetOutput "T1")}}
{{ printf "%s-%s" "even-more" $t1Out }}
{{end}}`
Output will be (try it on the Go Playground):
even-more-complex-stuff
The "T1" template simply outputs "complex-stuff", and the "T2" template gets the output of "T1", and concatenates the static text "even-more-" and the result of "T1".
The registered GetOutput function gets the name of a template to execute, executes it by directing its output to a local buffer, and returns the content of the buffer (along with the optional error of its execution).
Edit: I've found an exact duplicate: Capture or assign golang template output to variable