Re: Freemarker in Java app server, best practices

> There are solutions for everything, only you have to find or implement
> it... Like, if you find that many views has common actions, then maybe
> you are going towards a CMS-like system. And Java CMS-es exist, some
> even uses FreeMarker (like Magnolia), but surely you don't address the
> templates in the URL-s directly. There are many many approaches to all
> this, building dynamic Web sites. No wonder there are like infinite
> number of Web Application Frameworks and CMS-es around, and according
> their authors all is the best... ;) for what they did when they
> created the framework. There is no FM-specific best practice that
> applies to the framework architecture. Of course, FM templates should
> only be used for strictly presentation-related tasks, because that's
> what it's for. But FM doesn't dictate your framework architecture,
> it's just a component. (Similarly JSP doesn't (strictly...) dictate a
> framework architecture, although it's much more intrusive than FM.) So
> find out what you want without considering FM, and if you find that
> you need a template engine in your architecture, FM most certainly
> won't be in your way. You don't even need to do messy hacks as forward
> HTTP request to it (like you do in JSP model 2), as its functionality
> is primarily available through its public Java API. And it doesn't
> even expects to have a Servlet environment...

This is how we use FM in JCatapult instead of JSP. It also allows us  
to unit test everything, including the view execution. The closest  
anyone I know has come to that is a few folks tinkering with the  
Jasper compiler stand-alone. Still not ideal at all.

-bp


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