[stringtemplate-interest] Dynamic attribute reference?

[Terence Parr]

On Nov 8, 2006, at 9:23 AM, Mark Cooke wrote:

> Hi,
> I've not found a way to get this to work...
>
> I have a "model" in a code generator which is
> basically a database table of strings (ID, lang1Text,
> ..., langNText) which I want to generate separate java
> .properties files from.
>
> What I ideally want to do is have a template which can
> be used for every language, and just repeatedly apply
> it, changing the language each time.
> I can't seem to find a way of doing this with
> stringTemplate.
> (I Think I'm basically asking - can I doubly nest
> attribute references for property refs - i.e.
> String.<<language>Text> where if language was
> "English" String.getEnglishText() would be called?

Hi Mark.  Sure you can.  Use <(attr)()> to instantiate the template  
whose name is stored in attr rather than creating an attr template  
like <attr()> does.  Will that help?  You can also do <aMap. 
(keyNameInAttr)> to get the value for a key name stored in an  
attribute. :)

Also try <x.(language+"Text")>, etc...  Ain't that cool?

> Note: I'm looking at different "engines" comparing
> usability, ease of writing, running templates for
> re-writing a code generator which uses horrible string
> concatenation...

Yes, that is the pain.  ST is the answer.  I guarantee that the ANTLR  
v3 code generator is extremely complicated and that all backends are  
completely encapsulated in templates with no model-based computation  
nor is there a single char literal from the model that is emitted.

Ter