src/main/java/freemarker/template/TemplateTransformModel.java

/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
 * 
 *   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 * 
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations
 * under the License.
 */

package freemarker.template;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.Writer;
import java.util.Map;

import freemarker.template.utility.DeepUnwrap;

/**
 * "transform" template language data type: user-defined directives 
 * (much like macros) specialized on filtering output; you should rather use the newer {@link TemplateDirectiveModel}
 * instead. This certainly will be deprecated in FreeMarker 2.4.
 */
public interface TemplateTransformModel extends TemplateModel {

     /**
      * Returns a writer that will be used by the engine to feed the
      * transformation input to the transform. Each call to this method
      * must return a new instance of the writer so that the transformation
      * is thread-safe.
      * @param out the character stream to which to write the transformed output
      * @param args the arguments (if any) passed to the transformation as a 
      * map of key/value pairs where the keys are strings and the arguments are
      * TemplateModel instances. This is never null. If you need to convert the
      * template models to POJOs, you can use the utility methods in the 
      * {@link DeepUnwrap} class.
      * @return a writer to which the engine will feed the transformation 
      * input, or null if the transform does not support nested content (body).
      * The returned writer can implement the {@link TransformControl}
      * interface if it needs advanced control over the evaluation of the 
      * transformation body.
      */
     Writer getWriter(Writer out, Map args) 
         throws TemplateModelException, IOException;
}