Re: FreeMarker convert non-scalar to scalar

Tuesday, August 31, 2010, 5:36:18 AM, Erin Drummond wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I have frequently found the need to convert Hash and Sequence objects
> to Scalars in my FreeMarker templates (for debugging purposes mainly,
> so I can see what data is being made available in the template). The
> scalar representation would be identical to how you define them, for
> example a Hash would convert to "{ "key" : "value" }" and a Sequence
> would convert to "[ "item1", "item2" ]". However, I have not been able
> to find such functionality in FreeMarker. I tried to create a custom
> Method to do it, but it just errors out saying that it expects a
> Scalar as a parameter only.

You should use TemplatMethodModelEx (or TemplateDirectiveModel if it
will output HTML). These accept all kind of parameters.

> How would I go about achieving this in FreeMarker? Would I have to try
> and create a "to_s" builtin (if so, where do I start?), or is there a
> way to create methods that can accept non-scalar arguments?

Yes there is: TemplateMethodModelEx.

Anyway, FreeMarker should have a someValue?dump built-in and a
<#dump someValue /> directive (the last would dump in XHTML). Implementing
these in a way that they work in most cases is more tricky than it
sounds though... once someone should sit down and do it however.

> Thanks,
> Erin

-- 
Best regards,
 Daniel Dekany


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