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| <h1 class="content-header header-section1" id="dgui_misc_whitespace" itemprop="headline">White-space handling</h1> |
| </div></div><div class="page-menu"> |
| <div class="page-menu-title">Page Contents</div> |
| <ul><li><a class="page-menu-link" href="#dgui_misc_whitespace_stripping" data-menu-target="dgui_misc_whitespace_stripping">White-space stripping</a></li><li><a class="page-menu-link" href="#autoid_30" data-menu-target="autoid_30">Using compress directive</a></li></ul> </div><p>The control of the <a href="gloss.html#gloss.whiteSpace">white-space</a> in a template is a |
| problem that to some extent haunts every template engine in the |
| business.</p><p>Let see this template. I have marked the components of template |
| with colors: <span class="marked-text">text</span>, <span class="marked-interpolation">interpolation</span>, <span class="marked-ftl-tag">FTL tag</span>. With the <em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em>-s I visualize the <a href="gloss.html#gloss.lineBreak">line breaks</a>.</p> |
| |
| <div class="code-wrapper"><pre class="code-block code-template"><span class="marked-text"><p>List of users:<em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <span class="marked-ftl-tag"><#assign users = [{"name":"Joe", "hidden":false},<em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| {"name":"James Bond", "hidden":true},<em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| {"name":"Julia", "hidden":false}]></span><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <ul><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <span class="marked-ftl-tag"><#list users as user></span><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <span class="marked-ftl-tag"><#if !user.hidden></span><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <li><span class="marked-interpolation">${user.name}</span><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <span class="marked-ftl-tag"></#if></span><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <span class="marked-ftl-tag"></#list></span><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| </ul><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <p>That's all.</span></pre></div><p>If FreeMarker were to output all <span class="marked-text">text</span> as is, the output would be:</p> |
| |
| <div class="code-wrapper"><pre class="code-block code-output"><span class="marked-text"><p>List of users:<em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <ul><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <li></span>Joe<span class="marked-text"><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <li></span>Julia<span class="marked-text"><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| </ul><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <p>That's all.</span></pre></div><p>You have a lot of unwanted spaces and line breaks here. |
| Fortunately neither HTML nor XML is typically white-space sensitive, |
| but this amount of superfluous white-space can be annoying, and |
| needlessly increases the size of produced HTML. Of course, it is even |
| bigger problem when outputting white-space-sensitive formats.</p><p>FreeMarker provides the following tools to cope with this |
| problem:</p><ul> |
| <li> |
| <p>Tools to ignore certain white-space of the template files |
| <span class="marked-for-programmers">(parse time white-space |
| removal)</span>:</p> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li> |
| <p>White-space stripping: This feature automatically |
| ignores typical superfluous white-space around FTL tags. It |
| can be enabled or disabled on per template manner.</p> |
| </li> |
| |
| <li> |
| <p>Trimmer directives: <code class="inline-code">t</code>, |
| <code class="inline-code">rt</code>, <code class="inline-code">lt</code>. With these |
| directives you can explicitly tell FreeMarker to ignore |
| certain white-space. Read <a href="ref_directive_t.html#ref.directive.t">the |
| reference</a> for more information.</p> |
| </li> |
| |
| <li> |
| <p><a href="ref_directive_ftl.html#ref.directive.ftl"><code>ftl</code></a> |
| parameter <code class="inline-code">strip_text</code>. This removes all |
| top-level text from the template. It is useful for templates |
| that contain macro definitions only (and some other |
| non-outputting directives), because it removes the line-breaks |
| that you use between the macro definitions and between the |
| other top-level directives to improve the readability of the |
| template.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| |
| <li> |
| <p>Tools that remove white-space from the output <span class="marked-for-programmers">(on-the-fly white-space |
| removal)</span>:</p> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li> |
| <p><code class="inline-code">compress</code> directive.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| <h2 class="content-header header-section2" id="dgui_misc_whitespace_stripping">White-space stripping</h2> |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| <p>If this feature is enabled for a template, then it |
| automatically ignores (i.e. does not print to the output) two kind |
| of typical superfluous white-space:</p> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li> |
| <p>Indentation white-space, and trailing white-space at the |
| end of the line (includes the line break) will be ignored in |
| lines that contains only FTL tags (e.g. |
| <code class="inline-code"><@myMacro/></code>, <code class="inline-code"><#if |
| <em class="code-color">...</em>></code>) and/or FTL |
| comments (e.g. <code class="inline-code"><#-- blah --></code>), apart |
| from the the ignored white-space itself. For example, if a line |
| contains only an <code class="inline-code"><#if |
| <em class="code-color">...</em>></code>, then the |
| indentation before the tag and the line break after the tag will |
| be ignored. However, if the line contains <code class="inline-code"><#if |
| <em class="code-color">...</em>>x</code>, then the |
| white-space in that line will not be ignored, because of the |
| <code class="inline-code">x</code>, as that is not FTL tag. Note that |
| according these rules, a line that contains <code class="inline-code"><#if |
| <em class="code-color">...</em>><#list |
| <em class="code-color">...</em>></code> is subject to |
| white-space ignoring, while a line that contains |
| <code class="inline-code"><#if <em class="code-color">...</em>> <#list |
| <em class="code-color">...</em>></code> is not, because the |
| white-space between the two FTL tags is embedded white-space, |
| not indentation or trailing white-space.</p> |
| </li> |
| |
| <li> |
| <p>White-space sandwiched between the following directives is |
| ignored: <code class="inline-code">macro</code>, <code class="inline-code">function</code>, |
| <code class="inline-code">assign</code>, <code class="inline-code">global</code>, |
| <code class="inline-code">local</code>, <code class="inline-code">ftl</code>, |
| <code class="inline-code">import</code>, but only if there is |
| <em>only</em> white-space and/or FTL comments |
| between the directives. In practice it means that you can put |
| empty lines between macro definitions and assignments as spacing |
| for better readability, without printing needless empty lines |
| (line breaks) to the output.</p> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| |
| <p>The output of the last example with white-space stripping |
| enabled will be:</p> |
| |
| |
| |
| <div class="code-wrapper"><pre class="code-block code-output"><span class="marked-text"><p>List of users:<em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <ul><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <li></span>Joe<span class="marked-text"><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <li></span>Julia<span class="marked-text"><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| </ul><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <p>That's all.</span></pre></div> |
| |
| <p>This is because after stripping the template becomes the |
| following; the ignored text is not <span class="marked-text">colored</span>:</p> |
| |
| |
| |
| <div class="code-wrapper"><pre class="code-block code-template"><span class="marked-text"><p>List of users:<em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em></span> |
| <span class="marked-ftl-tag"><#assign users = [{"name":"Joe", "hidden":false},<em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| {"name":"James Bond", "hidden":true},<em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| {"name":"Julia", "hidden":false}]></span><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <span class="marked-text"><ul><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em></span> |
| <span class="marked-ftl-tag"><#list users as user></span><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <span class="marked-ftl-tag"><#if !user.hidden></span><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <span class="marked-text"> <li><span class="marked-interpolation">${user.name}</span><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em></span> |
| <span class="marked-ftl-tag"></#if></span><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <span class="marked-ftl-tag"></#list></span><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <span class="marked-text"></ul><em><span class="marked-invisible-text">[BR]</span></em> |
| <p>That's all.</span></pre></div> |
| |
| <p>White-space stripping can be enabled/disabled in per template |
| manner with the <a href="ref_directive_ftl.html#ref.directive.ftl"><code>ftl</code> directive</a>. |
| If you don't specify this with the <code class="inline-code">ftl</code> directive, |
| then white-space stripping will be enabled or disabled depending on |
| how the programmer has configured FreeMarker. The factory default is |
| white-space stripping enabled, and the programmers probably left it |
| so (<span class="marked-for-programmers">recommended</span>). <span class="marked-for-programmers">Note that enabling white-space stripping does |
| <em>not</em> degrade the performance of template |
| execution; white-space stripping is done during template |
| loading.</span></p> |
| |
| <p>White-space stripping can be disabled for a single line with |
| the <a href="ref_directive_nt.html#ref.directive.nt"><code>nt</code></a> |
| directive (for No Trim).</p> |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| <h2 class="content-header header-section2" id="autoid_30">Using compress directive</h2> |
| |
| |
| |
| |
| <p>Another solution is to use the <a href="ref_directive_compress.html#ref.directive.compress"><code>compress</code> |
| directive</a>. As opposed to white-space stripping, this works |
| directly on the generated output, not on the template. That is, it |
| will investigate the printed output on the fly, and does not |
| investigate the FTL program that creates the output. It aggressively |
| removes indentations, empty lines and repeated spaces/tabs (for more |
| information read the <a href="ref_directive_compress.html#ref.directive.compress">reference</a>). So the output |
| of:</p> |
| |
| |
| |
| <div class="code-wrapper"><pre class="code-block code-template"><strong><#compress></strong> |
| <#assign users = [{"name":"Joe", "hidden":false}, |
| {"name":"James Bond", "hidden":true}, |
| {"name":"Julia", "hidden":false}]> |
| List of users: |
| <#list users as user> |
| <#if !user.hidden> |
| - ${user.name} |
| </#if> |
| </#list> |
| That's all. |
| <strong></#compress></strong></pre></div> |
| |
| <p>will be:</p> |
| |
| |
| |
| <div class="code-wrapper"><pre class="code-block code-output">List of users: |
| - Joe |
| - Julia |
| That's all.</pre></div> |
| |
| <p>Note that <code class="inline-code">compress</code> is totally independent |
| of white-space stripping. So it is possible that the white-space of |
| template is stripped, and later the produced output is |
| <code class="inline-code">compress</code>-ed.</p> |
| |
| <p>Also, by default a user-defined directve called |
| <code class="inline-code">compress</code> is available in the data-model (due to |
| backward compatibility). This is the same as the directive, except |
| that you may optionally set the <code class="inline-code">single_line</code> |
| parameter, which will remove all intervening line breaks. If you |
| replace |
| <code class="inline-code"><#compress><em class="code-color">...</em></#compress></code> |
| on the last example with <code class="inline-code"><@compress |
| single_line=true><em class="code-color">...</em></@compress></code>, |
| then you get this output:</p> |
| |
| |
| |
| <div class="code-wrapper"><pre class="code-block code-output">List of users: - Joe - Julia That's all.</pre></div> |
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| <time itemprop="dateModified" datetime="2020-07-09T23:48:37Z" title="Thursday, July 9, 2020 11:48:37 PM GMT">2020-07-09 23:48:37 GMT</time> </p> |
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