Has Freemarker something similar to toolbox.xml-file of Velocity?

Question

I have a Struts 1 application which works with Velocity as a template language. I shall replace Velocity with Freemarker, and am looking for something similar to 'toolbox.xml'-File from VelocityViewServlet. (there you can map names to Java Classes and, using these names it is possible to access methods and variables of various Java class in the Velocity template). Does someone know, what is possible with Freemarker instead? So far I have found only information about the form beans...would be glad if someone can help....

Answer 1

For the utility functions and macros that are View-related (not Model-related), the standard practice is to implement them in FreeMarker and put them into one or more templates and #import (or #include) them. It's also possible to pull in TemplateDirectiveModel-s and TemplateMethodModelEx-es (these are similar to macros and function, but they are implemented in Java) into the template that you will #import/#inlcude as <#assign foo = 'com.example.Foo'?new()>.

As of calling plain static Java methods, you may use the ObjectWrapper's getStaticModels() (assuming it's a BeansWrapper subclass) and then get the required methods as TemplateMethodModelEx-es with staticModels.get("com.example.MyStatics"). Now that you have them, you can put them into the data-model (Velocity context) in the Controller, or pick methods from them in an #import-ed template, etc. Of course, you can also put POJO objects into the data-model so you can call their non-static methods.

The third method, which is not much different from putting things into the data-model is using "shared variables", which are variables (possibly including TemplateMethodModelEx-es and TemplateDirectiveModel-s) defined on the Configuration level.