Craig said:
...
>  For example, here's a simple little loop example in
> Velocity syntax and a couple approaches in JSP:
>
> Velocity:
> ========
>
> (Note -- it's assumed that the Customer collection has been stored in the
> VelocityContext by some preceding business logic.)

actually, if you are using the Velocity/Struts support in the Velocity Tools
project, the recommended pattern is to define a set of "tools" in an xml
config.  these will then be automatically placed in the template's Context
and available for you to "pull" the needed data.  there are other ways of
getting objects into the template still, but i don't have time to detail
them here.  see the docs concerning the VelocityViewServlet for that.  oh,
and Jon Stevens does a good job of explaining the Pull MVC Model here:
http://jakarta.apache.org/turbine/turbine-2/pullmodel.html

>   #foreach $result in $results {
>     <tr>
>       <td>$result.ID</td>
>       <td>$result.Name</td>
>     </tr>
>   }

actually, this is syntax is almost completely wrong.  :)

a more fitting example would be:
#foreach( $result in $sometool.results )
<tr>
    <td>$result.ID</td>
    <td>$result.Name</td>
</tr>
#end

velocity and it's supporting tools are evolving too. :-)

...
> * Velocity advocates used to argue that using Velocity was safer
>   because it restricted what a page designer could do to calling
>   getter methods.  This was never a completely true argument
>   (how do *you* know that the getter method of the beans you are
>   calling doesn't mutate something?), but it's been pretty much
>   eliminated by the fact that you can call arbitrary methods
>   in Velocity.

yes, it is possible to design badly even in Velocity, but perhaps we could
agree it's at least harder in Velocity to do so.

...
>
> There was an interesting article on onjava.com about a project to
> implement a simple blogger app that used both Struts and Velocity:
>
>   http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2002/04/17/wblogosj2ee.html
>
> I was particularly struck by the following snippet of Velocity code:
>
>   $macros.showNavBar(true)
>
> which builds part of the UI by rendering the navigation bar.  I don't know
> about you, but that looks an awful lot like a scriptlet equivalent:
>
>   <% macros.showNavBar(true); %>
>
> to me :-).

yeah, no offense intended to David Johnson, but that's a really poor way to
use Velocity.  it looks as though that method is intended to spit out some
HTML hardcoded into whatever $macros is or some such thing.  the HTML
shouldn't come from the java, it should be in the template to begin with, or
at least defined the global Velocimacro library.  that way the code could
just be:

#showNavBar( true)

anyway, i hope i'm not coming off too argumentative, it's just that these
are poor examples of using velocity.  i wouldn't want people to get the
wrong idea. :)

Nathan Bubna
[EMAIL PROTECTED]


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