Thanks for the reply, I decided to not to implement the calculate method and place it in my model instead, so if a user needs a new calculation, I would have to hard code that.<div><br></div><div>What I am doing is creating a generic reporting tool, previously, for every financial institution, it requires a specific report to be sent back to the bank. There are over 50 of them (where each one is a big module of code itself) and they keep on expanding. I decided, as an experiment, to remove all the legacy code and use String template which is a single module to do what the other 50 modules has done. And it is working perfectly.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I was really sad when I wanted to break the model view separation, but I wanted to dynamically alter the model.</div><div><br></div><div>Thanks for all your help! I am going to stick with the strict model / view separation, and figure out different ways to generically do my task.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Regards,</div><div>Mohamed Mansour<br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 5:36 AM, Koerner, Ron <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ron.koerner@wincor-nixdorf.com">ron.koerner@wincor-nixdorf.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">Hi Mohamed,</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">actually it is the philosophy of StringTemplate that
templates don't do calculations other than what is needed for display. So I
fear it is not the right tool for your task, since you require something which
builds a page model (all data displayed on the generated page) from your
business model (all data the application provides) and something which generates
a visible page from the page model.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">StringTemplate only performs the latter job. If you want to
use ST anyway you need to build something which takes some userdefined
rules/calculations and generates a page model out of the business
model.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">If you prefer a very dirty hack: create an object
like:</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">class Calculator implements Map { public String get(String
expr) { return eval(expr); } /* implement dummies for the other operations
*/ }</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">Add a calculator to your page model:</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">st.setAttribute("calc",new
Calculator());</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">Use the calculator in your template:</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">$calc.({$a$+$b$})$</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">Just to make clear: this is a very very dirty hack and
violates the StringTemplate philosophy in ways which could bring the wrath of
the god(s) of model/view-separation upon you or me and may or may not turn the
one who actually implements the above into an appropriate heap of
dust.</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">Also Terence might not invite you to dinner
anymore...</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">Regards,</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2">Ron</font></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span><font face="Arial" color="#0000ff" size="2"></font></span> </div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left">
<hr>
</div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><b>From:</b>
<a href="mailto:stringtemplate-interest-bounces@antlr.org" target="_blank">stringtemplate-interest-bounces@antlr.org</a>
[mailto:<a href="mailto:stringtemplate-interest-bounces@antlr.org" target="_blank">stringtemplate-interest-bounces@antlr.org</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Mohamed
Mansour<br><b>Sent:</b> Friday, July 31, 2009 8:27 PM<br><b>To:</b> Jim
Idle<br><b>Cc:</b> <a href="mailto:stringtemplate-interest@antlr.org" target="_blank">stringtemplate-interest@antlr.org</a><br><b>Subject:</b> Re:
[stringtemplate-interest] How to use variables inside
formatmodifiers<br></font><br></div><div><div></div><div class="h5">
<div></div>Hmm, that would be unfortunate. I can't use this kind of approach
then. I am trying to create a generic "Report" where every user can do whatever
they want with it. If they wanted to add 10 to the result to any variable, they
could. But we can't do that with StringTemplate.
<div><br></div>
<div>I guess that is the limitation of StringTemplate.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Isn't there any way I can make it work, like a hack? A user can modify a
variable by appending(adding) a number to it. (simply scenario)</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Thanks,</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>-- Mohamed Mansour<br><br><br>
<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 2:16 PM, Jim Idle <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jimi@temporal-wave.com" target="_blank">jimi@temporal-wave.com</a>></span>
wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="padding-left:1ex;margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:#ccc 1px solid">
<div text="#000000" bgcolor="#ffffff">
<div>
<div></div>
<div>Mohamed Mansour wrote:
<blockquote type="cite">
<div class="gmail_quote">Hello,
<div><br></div>
<div>I have been using StringTemplate to produce stylized report
files. Some variables need to be formatted someway, for example if I
want to uppercase a variable I do, therefore I setup an attribute
renderer:</div>
<div><font face="'courier new', monospace">$foo;format="uppercase"$</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>In my specific case I would need to apply more than one formatter (more
than one attribute renderer for a variable), so I created many attribute
renders and I can process them like:</div>
<div><font face="'courier new', monospace">$foo;format="uppercase|fixedlength:10:x:R|lowercase"$</font>
If you notice a modifer could have parameters ( with colons as seen with
fixedlength)</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>So if $foo is "123aBc" it will return "XXXX123abc", the above works
perfectly fine</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>My main problem is that, some parameters in my format modifiers need to
be ST variables, for example, I would need to add a number:</div>
<div><font face="'courier new', monospace">$numA;format="calculate:+:$numB$"$</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>If numA = 10, and numB = 5, the formatter will return15. But my problem
is that, it treats the variables as a string doesn't actually give me the
exact value of the variable.</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>How can I pass variables in the "format"
area?</div></div></blockquote></div></div>Calculations need to be performed
before setting the values in the templates otherwise you are breaking the
model/view separation that StringTemplate is as strict about as it can be. In
other words you should not be trying to do this.<br><br>The attribute renderer
while powerful, has to be used carefully so that you do not break this
separation as it is kind of a back door (the only way to close it would be to
implement a generic formatting engine and get rid of attribute renderers, but
that is a lot of code bloat of
course.<br><br>Jim<br></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>stringtemplate-interest
mailing list<br><a href="mailto:stringtemplate-interest@antlr.org" target="_blank">stringtemplate-interest@antlr.org</a><br><a href="http://www.antlr.org/mailman/listinfo/stringtemplate-interest" target="_blank">http://www.antlr.org/mailman/listinfo/stringtemplate-interest</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br></div>
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