CODEWITHSUNDEEP
velocitytemplate-engine
hrmffffff
hrmffffff

Reputation: 100

Apache Velocity "main template"?

I'm very new to Apache Velocity, and I'm having a little trouble figuring out the optimal way to structure my templates. In most of the guides I have seen the pages have been built like this: 

#parse("header.vm")
<body>
    ...
</body>
#parse("footer.vm")

I have also seen someone come close to a "main" template with this approach:

<head>
    ...
</head>
<body>
#if($activeTab=="home")
    #parse("home.vm")
#elseif($activeTab=="aboutus")
    #parse("aboutus.vm")
...and so on.
</body>

Which seems a little silly, but I guess it works.

I've used Twirl a lot, so I might be spoiled, but I'd like to inject a template into another, essentially ending up with a main template like this:

<head>
    ...
</head>
<body>
    $content
</body>

And then writing every other template as: 

#parse(main){ 
    TEMPLATE CONTENT 
}

Is this possible in Velocity? If yes, is it bad practice, and if so why? Thanks.

Upvotes: 6

Views: 3322

Answers (2)

spark-java
spark-java

Reputation: 121

You can use the $!bodyContent variable.

mainLayout.vm:

#macro(mainLayout)
<head>
    ...
</head>
<body>
    $!bodyContent
</body>
#end

index.vm:

#@mainLayout()
  <h1>Index page</h1>
#end

Upvotes: 5

Gelin Luo
Gelin Luo

Reputation: 14373

Velocity itself doesn't provide good support to layout template (the main template as you called). However they provide a tool called Velocity Layout Servlet (VLS).

To give you a heads up, some other templating solution like Rythm provides very nice template layout management via the template inheritance mechanism (demo). Disclaimer: I am the author of Rythm so I might have some bias here. However you can checkout this article created by a third party to understand the pros and cons of different template solutions.

Upvotes: 5

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