 | FreeMarkerA template engine. |
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FreeMarker Description
A template engine. FreeMarker is a "template engine"; a generic tool to generate text output (anything from HTML to autogenerated source code) based on templates. FreeMarker is a Java package, a class library for Java programmers. It's not an application for end-users in itself, but something that programmers can embed into their products.FreeMarker is designed to be practical for the generation of HTML Web pages, particularly by servlet-based applications following the MVC (Model View Controller) pattern. The idea behind using the MVC pattern for dynamic Web pages is that you separate the designers (HTML authors) from the programmers.Everybody works on what they are good at. Designers can change the appearance of a page without programmers having to change or recompile code, because the application logic (Java programs) and page design (FreeMarker templates) are separated.Templates do not become polluted with complex program fragments. This separation is useful even for projects where the programmer and the HMTL page author is the same person, since it helps keeping the application clear and easily maintainable.Although FreeMarker has some programming capabilities, it is not a full-blown programming language like PHP. Instead, Java programs prepare the data to be displayed, and FreeMarker just generates textual pages that display the prepared data using templates.FreeMarker is not a Web application framework. It is suitable for a component in a Web application framework, but the FreeMarker engine itself knows nothing about HTTP or servlets. It simply generates text.As such, it is perfectly usable in non-web application environments as well. Note, however, that we provide out-of-the-box solutions for using FreeMarker as the view component of Model 2 frameworks (e.g. Struts), which also let you use JSP taglibs in the templates. Here are some key features of "FreeMarker": General purpose: · Can be used to generate any kind of text: HTML, XML, RTF, Java source code, etc. · Easy to embed into your product: Lightweight. Does not require servlet environment (does not depend on javax.servlet classes). · Pluggable template loader: you can load templates from any sources; local files, database, etc. · You can do whatever you want with the generated text: store it in a local file, send it as e-mail, send it back to a Web browser from a Web application, etc. Powerful template language: · All usual directives: include, if/elseif/else, loop constructs. · Creating and changing variables in templates. · Can use complex expressions to specify values almost everywhere. · String operations: concatenation, sub-string, uppercase, capitalize, escaping, etc. · Decimal precision arithmetic calculations · Boolean arithmetic · Reading array and associative array elements · Array and associative array literals · You can add your own functions (methods) for special calculations. Macros with named and positional parameters and with nested content (body). For example: · < @myMacro color="red" width=2>...< /@myMacro > · Name-spaces to help build and maintain reusable macro libraries or to divide big projects into separated modules, without worrying about name clashes. · Output transformation blocks. Do transformations as HTML-escaping, compression, syntax-highlight etc. on the output generated by the nested template fragment. You can define your own transformations. Versatile data model: · FreeMarker does not work through direct reflection on Java objects; the Java objects are exposed to the template as variables through pluggable object wrappers. Thus, you can show the objects (Java beans, XML documents, SQL query result sets, etc.) in an abstract, tailored way for the template authors, without bothering them with technical details. Web-ready: · Built-in constructs in the template language to handle typical Web related tasks like HTML-escaping. · Can be integrated with "Model 2" Web application frameworks out-of-the-box as JSP replacement. · Supports JSP taglibs. · Designed for MVC pattern: separate visual design from application logic, separate page designers from programmers. Internationalization/localization aware: · Charset aware (uses UNICODE internally). · Locale sensitive number formatting. · Locale sensitive date and time formatting. · Non-US characters can be used in identifiers (as variable names). · Multiple variations of the same template for different languages. Powerful XML Processing Capabilities: · < #recurse > and < #visit > directives (new in version 2.3) for recursively walking an XML tree · Clean, intuitive XML object model accessible from template. Comparing with other products: · You might also be interested what distinguish FreeMarker from Apache Velocity. What's New in This Release: · Fixed a bug that caused incorrect unwrapping of sequences to Java arrays (See bug report) · Created a new freemarker.runtime.attempt category and exceptions caught in < #attempt > blocks are logged into it at a DEBUG severity. · Fixing the (ages old) problem of RhinoWrapper not working with all versions of Rhino because of binary incompatible change of Rhino's Undefined.instance. · Macro names can no longer be changed through the API.
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