CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javatemplatesvelocity
LdSe
LdSe

Reputation: 334

Velocity Templates - New Line

I've been working with Apache's Velocity engine and a custom template.
The thing is, that I haven't been able to generate a String with the corresponding line breaks. I tried almost everything that I found, such as using $esc.n and $esc.newline (I'm already using escape tools on my project) but it seems that the version I'm currently using doesn't support it (1.4), checked if putting '\n', '\\n' and even '\\\n' would work, but same thing.

Does anyone have any solution to this?

Upvotes: 18

Views: 42526

Answers (7)

A4L
A4L

Reputation: 17595

Just throwing in my two cents here, here is what I came up with:

#set( $E = "" )
#set ( $System = $E.class.forName('java.lang.System'))
#set( $NL = $System.lineSeparator() )

when used, $NL produces a line break.

Also note, if you are in a loop, you might don't need that hassle at all. for example:

#set( $s = "abc" )
#foreach( $e in $s.split("") )
$e
#end

will already produce

a
b
c

Upvotes: 0

buergi
buergi

Reputation: 6256

In Velocity 1.4 neither newlines in strings works nor does the escapeTool.getNewline() exist. If you do not have the possibility to add anything to the context, here is a Velocity-only hack to generate arbitrary characters:

#macro(chr $charCode $str)
  #set($str="0")
  #set($chars=$str.charAt(0).toChars($charCode))
  #set($str="")
  #foreach($char in $chars)
    #set($str="$str$char")
  #end
#end

#chr(10 $nl)

First Line${nl}Second Line

It uses Character.toChars() to convert the ASCII code 0x0A = 10 to a char[] which it then assembles into a string. This way one could generate any character such as

#chr(129299 $nerd) ## U+1F913 => 0x1F913 = 129299
$nerd
## outputs 🤓

Upvotes: 2

BigRedBettaFish
BigRedBettaFish

Reputation: 435

It might be easiest to simply use the Velocity EscapeTool.

See this link: https://velocity.apache.org/tools/releases/2.0/javadoc/org/apache/velocity/tools/generic/EscapeTool.html#getNewline%28%29

Example Usage: Line Break Here: $esc.newline This is on a new line.

Upvotes: 0

ClubbedAce
ClubbedAce

Reputation: 849

I needed a new line for generating javascript. Well, I didn't need it of course, but it made reading the generated code easier while developing. In this case, I just set a variable so that the Velocity was easier to read. This is all you need:

Velocity Code:

#set( $newline="
")
#set( $jsCode = "var bling='blang';{$newline}var bark='bite';{$newline}" )
<script>
$jsCode</script>

Result:

<script>
var bling='blang';
var bark='bite';
</script>

Upvotes: 9

Vadzim
Vadzim

Reputation: 26160

If you are using Velocity 1.5 or later, you can also just put the new line in there: 

#set( $foo = "this has a 
line break" )

Upvotes: 4

jt.
jt.

Reputation: 7705

We had issues with newlines and ended up putting a property on the VelocityContext:

VelocityContext ctx = new VelocityContext();
ctx.put("newline", "\n");

Then, wherever we needed to use a newline, we would reference the context variable:

$newline

We use this in cases where we need to replace newlines in a string with <br />.

Upvotes: 22

jbx
jbx

Reputation: 22128

Are you using Velocity to generate HTML content? In that case remember that you need to use <br> not a newline.

If you actually want a new line character you just put the actual new line character, i.e. press enter. There is no escape sequences like \n in Velocity.

Upvotes: 5

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