[stringtemplate-interest] STGroupXML - to configure templates in raw formats

Sat Sep 17 06:36:06 PDT 2011

Hi All,

There has been some expressed desire to have a template be just a .html file
(or any other plain file for that matter) and not have to surround every
template with "TEMPLATE_NAME() ::= <<>>". To facilitate this use case I've
created some proof of concept code that uses XML to specify a group of
thease "raw template files".

Here is an example of the XML behind an STGroupXML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<group>
    <template name="method">
        <arg>name</arg>
        <arg>body</arg>
        <arg>cleanup</arg>
        <location>templates/method.txt</location>
    </template>
    <template name="useMethod">
        <location>templates/useMethod.txt</location>
    </template>
</group>

Method.txt contains the following text:

void <name>() {
  <body>
  <cleanup>
}

Notice there is no template def at the beginning.

Also the useMethod template similarly has no template definition at the top.

<method("getName","return firstName","")>

Like int other groups these templates can call each other.

The code create an STGroupXML object if very similar to other STGroups.

STGroupXML group = new STGroupXML(new File("test.xml"));
ST template = group.getInstanceOf("useMethod");
System.out.println(template.render());

I think this would be one way to allow files to be of any extension and
allow HTML editors to work better whit ST templates.

I will be cleaning up the code and checking into strum soon.

What do people think?

Collin
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