FAQ Table of Contents

In addition, JPlates is designed to work with popular open-source tools such as Ant, JUnit, Tomcat, JBoss, Xalan, Xerces, etc.

JPlates methods are executable templates, and they're also object-oriented methods that have access to encapsulated fields, other methods, etc. The literal parts of your methods are executed by copying them to the template output. The control-flow statements act like similar control-flow statements in Java. The complete object-oriented programming and powerful template processing features work together to produce template-based applications that you design and implement like Java applications.

Since JPlates objects can encapsulate state just like Java objects, it's easy to create other JPlates objects, initialize them, and use them together by calling methods just like you would do with Java objects in a Swing application or any other Java application.

Every JPlates template method can use the same template processing features, so every JPlates method can contribute to the output of a template request, just by being called. Since JPlates is a fully object-oriented language, you can inherit or override methods in subclasses and take advantage of all object-oriented programming techniques and design patterns.

JPlates statements are an integral part of JPlates. Many JPlates statements use syntax for expressions and types that is based on Java syntax, in order to make it easy to learn. But everything in a JPlates statement is fully defined by and supported by JPlates. The difference is that JPlates statements give you control over complexity rather than adding to it.

JPlates statements take the place of JSTL and other control-flow tag libraries, and JPlates provides support classes for HTML forms processing that take the place of the Struts tag libraries. Our experience shows that normal object-oriented approaches are more productive and easier to use correctly than custom tags.

The JPlates compiler supports incremental compilation too, so you don't have to rebuild everything every time.

java [options] com.jplates.JPlateApplication full-jplates-class-name

For other cases, follow the guidelines in the User Guide section on using JPlates from a Java application.

  <servlet>
    <servlet-name>JPlateServlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>com.jplates.servlet.JPlateServlet</servlet-class>
    <init-param>
      <param-name>JPlates.DEBUG</param-name>
      <param-value>true</param-value>
    </init-param>
  </servlet>
        

JPlates takes advantage of all functionality provided by the Servlet container, such as session-failover.

JPlates provides several utility classes to make building web applications as easy as possible. JPlates also provides excellent support for working with Struts as an alternative to JSP.

You can replace your JSPs with JPlates classes one at a time. If you plan to replace your JSPs with JPlates, don't forget to take advantage of all the object-oriented features in JPlates.

JPlates doesn't depend on Struts in any way, and can be used to implement web applications on its own. Struts provides some very useful functionality, though, that complements JPlates nicely.

When you use JPlates with Struts, the only parts of Struts you don't use are the JSP tag libraries that Struts provides for JSP users. JPlates provides comparable or superior functionality in all cases, though, so everything is even easier. JPlates provides support classes to for form-based input and working with Struts ActionForms. JPlates is compatible with Struts validation, all kinds of ActionForms, nested ActionForm structure, etc.

    <action
          path="/myAction"
          type="mypackage.MyActionFormType"
          name="myActionFormInstanceName"
          validate="true"
          scope="request" >
      <forward name="success"
            path="/my.complete.package.MyJPlateClass.jplate"/>
    </action>
        

   void useActionForm() {
     MyActionFormType actionForm = (MyActionFormType)
        getSessionAttribute("myActionFormInstanceName", null);
     ...
   }
        

JPlates provides support classes for working with Struts and with the servlet environment without custom tags. Using conventional object-oriented approaches, JPlates support for Struts and forms processing is easier to learn and use than JSP tag libraries.