7 Jun
2005
7 Jun
'05
5:33 p.m.
I am considering implementing a custom XWikiRenderer that uses FreeMarker
(http://www.freemarker.org/) to render the xwiki templates
(src\main\web\templates) and documents, as an alternative to velocity.
I thought that it would be as simple as implementing a custom XWikiRenderer,
however I discovered that
* the XWikiVelocityRenderer exposes some static methods, which is used
within a few different xwiki classes
* VelocityContext instances are constructed and manipulated outside from the
XWikiVelocityRenderer
Are there any plans to refactor the code base to support custom
XWikiRenderer implementations.
My ideal goal would be to enable a mix of rendering engines - freemarker,
velocity, or any other template language. However some metadata would be
needed to inform the rendering api which template engine to use.
To begin with - I'd like to be able to reuse all of the existing templates,
but specify for a wiki, or for a space, that freemarker is the default
rendering engine. Then an enhancement could be to allow each document to
override this.
Then - the next step could be to allow the templates to be written in
freemarker.
I am fairly experienced with freemarker having used it on a few web sites
over the last few years. I also implemented the integration code for
freemarker in webwork.
Thanks,
Cameron.
7 Jun
7 Jun
6:16 p.m.
New subject: [xwiki-dev] Custom XWikiRenderer
Hi Cameron,
This looks like an interesting project. A few things that you need to be
carefull about:
As you have seen Velocity is used both for page rendering and template
rendering.
Changing the templates to use another engine is a lot of work. Also it
is used from time to time for some specific rendering (tables for in
displayForm, menus coming from the preferences, textarea field content
using displayRendered).
You can write your own rendered and add it to the rendering loop in the
XWikiRenderingEngine constructor. We probably need to refactor the
configuration of the rendering loop which could be in a config file.
You could drop Velocity from the rendering loop but in this case the
default wiki would probably not work any more, but you can start from an
empty database.
You need to be carefull with security. Velocity is great because it can
only use objects that are in the velocity context but not use any Java.
I don't know enough freemarker but you need to be carefull about this.
You need to check how to handle the includes (the context needs to be
shared one way or another).
You need to be carefull about template language conflicts. The first
renderers can have an effect on the content depending on the template
language. So the order in which the template languages are called is
important.
Now some of these issues could be fixed. Indeed it would be great to
configure a "default" template language and to override this in a
document configuration. This would also improve the performance as we
would not try to render things with all rendered. We would need to find
something smart in this area. The default behaviour could be a template
engine + wiki syntax. Usage of other templates engines or groovy could
then be added manually to the page. There are also the plugins renderers
(any plugin can be called in the rendering loop) which would need to be
integrated somewhere.
Anyway this looks interesting and we welcome you on board the XWiki
contributors team !
Ludovic
Cameron Braid a écrit :
I am considering implementing a custom XWikiRenderer
that uses
FreeMarker (http://www.freemarker.org/) to render the xwiki templates
(src\main\web\templates) and documents, as an alternative to velocity.
I thought that it would be as simple as implementing a custom
XWikiRenderer, however I discovered that
* the XWikiVelocityRenderer exposes some static methods, which is used
within a few different xwiki classes
* VelocityContext instances are constructed and manipulated outside
from the XWikiVelocityRenderer
Are there any plans to refactor the code base to support custom
XWikiRenderer implementations.
My ideal goal would be to enable a mix of rendering engines -
freemarker, velocity, or any other template language. However some
metadata would be needed to inform the rendering api which template
engine to use.
To begin with – I’d like to be able to reuse all of the existing
templates, but specify for a wiki, or for a space, that freemarker is
the default rendering engine. Then an enhancement could be to allow
each document to override this.
Then – the next step could be to allow the templates to be written in
freemarker.
I am fairly experienced with freemarker having used it on a few web
sites over the last few years. I also implemented the integration code
for freemarker in webwork.
Thanks,
Cameron.
--
Ludovic Dubost
XPertNet: http://www.xpertnet.fr/
Blog: http://www.ludovic.org/blog/
XWiki: http://www.xwiki.com
Skype: ldubost AIM: nvludo Yahoo: ludovic
9 Jun
9 Jun
9:34 a.m.
New subject: [xwiki-dev] Custom XWikiRenderer
Yes definitely ! I think that is a great proposal to refactor and
improve scripting / rendering engine support in XWiki in a modular
manner and Freemarker seems to be quite an interesting and powerful
approach, even though, as they say, there is a smaller community than
Velocity.
The differences with Velocity are explained here along with a list of features:
http://www.freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html
On 6/7/05, Ludovic Dubost <ludovic(a)xwiki.com> wrote:
Anyway this looks interesting and we welcome you on board the XWiki
contributors team !
Ludovic
--
Luis Arias
http://www.xwiki.com
http://www.innover-entreprendre.net
+33 6 14 20 87 93 mobile
7092
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7094
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2 comments
3 participants
participants (3)
-
Cameron Braid -
Ludovic Dubost -
Luis Arias