Re: got tired of waiting for IDE support - new tool to preview FreeMarker templates

On 9 avr. 08, at 23:42, Jonathan Revusky <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 1:49 PM, Jeromy Evans
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Daniel Dekany wrote:
>>>
>>> I think many will find it useful, also it would be useful for  
>>> learning
>>> FTL. However, the context model should support numbers, boolean,
>>> dates, and maps and lists as variables. So it should be recursive  
>>> (due
>>> to nested maps and lists), and there should be pulldown to chose the
>>> variable type (that defaults to string).
>>>
>>>
>
> Actually, in my thinking about this kind of tool, I often end up
> thinking that there is a general need in FreeMarker for more literal
> types. Of course, the normal usage of a templating engine is that the
> data comes from outside the template (that's even really the whole
> point) and then there's all that ultra purist separation of concerns
> stuff.... BUT OTOH, in various contexts, it looks to me to be quite
> useful to be able to define fairly complex sample data on the page
> itself. Just from the point of view of unit testing, the idea that the
> template is its own unit test, except that it needs some sample data.
>
> I was wondering whether having a literal type for something like JSON
> or YAML (I think YAML is really a superset of JSON), so that you could
> maybe just define a whole data model right in FTL.
>
> <#assign dataModel = y"
>   arbitrarily nested blah blah
> ">
>
> (That's assuming a syntax roughly like that of raw strings.)
>
> Another syntax that occurred to me was x{....} with the idea being
> that this is an extended version of {...} the literal map syntax.
> Though maybe x would be better to keep for an XML literal type.
>
> Also, I was wondering about having it as an option in the FTL tag,  
> like:
>
> <#ftl testdata=x{
> ...
> }>
>
> I mean, there's the general problem wrt tools, that in order to
> display the template, you do need some sample data set to work with.
>> From a learning POV, the ability to define some data in the page and
> then just output it looks pretty attractive. Well, not just for
> learning, a tool that helps you edit templates could have a preview
> facility, but there is a need for some sample data for that.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>

Would it be that hard to write a Java-side macro that parses its text  
and adds variables in the datamodel?

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