[stringtemplate-interest] IronStringTemplate

[Robert Byrne]

The primary reason is that I need to use 3rd party asp.net server controls,
which StringTemplate as it stands won't support. Short of trying to render
the server controls into html chunks and insert them into a template
(something I have already investigated) I would have to stick with the
standard webforms view engine and be done with it.

 

From: Todd Stout [mailto:todd.tstout at gmail.com] 
Sent: 29 June 2009 13:15
To: Robert Byrne
Cc: stringtemplate-interest at antlr.org
Subject: Re: [stringtemplate-interest] IronStringTemplate

 

StringTemplate works just fine with .Net now.  What is the motivation for
re-implementing it?

On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 1:33 AM, Robert Byrne <rob at fractis.com> wrote:

Hi,

 

I'm toying with the idea of building a StringTemplate implementation for the
DLR (Microsoft .NET Dynamic Language Runtime), hence the Iron prefix which
matches up with other projects like IronPython, IronRuby etc.

 

The primary use case I'm thinking is for ASP.NET, where I have one pressing
need: I must be able to use existing ASP.NET server controls. This means I
can't use StringTemplate out of the box, so it got me thinking about
building an interpreter/translator that would sit on top of normal ASP.NET
MVC pages. I really believe in the clean view only semantics and philosophy
of StringTemplate, as well as its clean syntax, especially as the templates
are edited by web designers who cant deal with the traditional ASP.NET
syntax.

 

I also feel that a native .NET implementation on the DLR with ASP.NET in
mind can provide a better developer experience (i.e. support for concepts
useful in web application development) and better performance/scalability
too.

 

Because I want to get my hands dirty with the DLR and ANTLR, I'm essentially
scratchbuilding the project, starting from a handwritten grammar up.

 

Would there be any interest in this? I can imagine there are a few people
who want to adopt StringTemplate but are bound by the requirement to use
existing 3rd party server controls like datagrids etc, or would like to use
traditional ASP.NET views with some StringTemplate markup.

 

Also, is there any objection to the use of the name/syntax in an
'unofficial' spin off, considering that it would not be a fully compatible
implementation (I intend not to implement some advanced features like
parallel template application (for now) as well as add some additional
features that are meaningful to web application development, also no
groups). I would of course include all the relevant notices and
attributions. My only concern is that it could cause confusion in the
community, as to what the relationship is between the 'official' version and
this upstart one.

 

Any thoughts are welcome.

 

Regards,

Robert.


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