Re: A WM brain bender: The solution

Mike Weerdenburg wrote:
> Hello everybody,
> 
>  
> 
> I use this 'evalStringTemplate' to convert text from a database (or other
> source) to a 'parsed' text.
> 

I quite like your solution, certainly more than the #include as template 
"string:xxxxx" mechanism I am using currently (hey, it works). However 
the #include with configurable "protocols" is a brilliant mechanism and 
very useful indeed.

To address Marcel's complaint about the "abuse" of #include, multiple 
databases containing templates would be configured using multiple 
delegating template loader definitions, such as db1: and db2:

However a DB-based template loader could work like the URL template 
loading, and include the server and database name etc, with a JDBC URL. 
There's no reason not to do this as far as I can see, otherwise you're 
saying that http:// or https:// is a bad machanism.


Back to the main issue... the problem with #evalStringTemplate is 
name-spacing of variables. #eval does this nicely, although an option to 
-not- create a new context would be nice.

I think this feature should be built into #eval really, as Keats suggested:

#eval <macro or string> [using { ... }]

Personally, unless "using" is optional at the moment (can't check, 
webmacro.org seems down again), I think if "using" is omitted it should 
just use the current page context.

Also, you could mitigate some of the error trapping problems of allowing 
strings to eval by requiring "as string" for String evaluations:

#eval <Macro | "as string" String> [using { ... }]

What do you guys think?

Cheers


-- 
Marc Palmer - - - [email protected]
			
Wangjammers, J2ME Developers
   ~ http://www.wangjammers.org/games/

Blog
   ~ http://www.jroller.com/page/Wangjammer5



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