A Template is a script that evaluates by writing its content through a Writer. This is a simplified replacement for Velocity that uses JEXL (instead of OGNL/VTL) as the scripting language.
The source text is parsed considering each line beginning with '$$' (as default pattern) as JEXL script code and all others as Unified JEXL expressions; those expressions will be invoked from the script during evaluation and their output gathered through a writer. It is thus possible to use looping or conditional construct "around" expressions generating output.
For instance:
$$ for(var x : [1, 3, 5, 42, 169]) { $$ if (x == 42) { Life, the universe, and everything $$ } else if (x > 42) { The value $(x} is over fourty-two $$ } else { The value ${x} is under fourty-two $$ } $$ }
Will evaluate as:
The value 1 is under fourty-two The value 3 is under fourty-two The value 5 is under fourty-two Life, the universe, and everything The value 169 is over fourty-two
During evaluation, the template context exposes its writer as '$jexl' which is safe to use in this case. This allows writing directly through the writer without adding new-lines as in:
$$ for(var cell : cells) { $jexl.print(cell); $jexl.print(';') }
A template is expanded as one JEXL script and a list of UnifiedJEXL expressions; each UnifiedJEXL expression being replace in the script by a call to jexl:print(expr) (the expr is in fact the expr number in the template). This integration uses a specialized JexlContext (TemplateContext) that serves as a namespace (for jexl:) and stores the expression array and the writer (java.io.Writer) that the 'jexl:print(...)' delegates the output generation to.
@since 2.1