merging 2 html files into a single vm (velocity macro) - html

I have two html files, I used 2 different frameworks to create 2 different web application for smart phones and other devices such as tablets.
now I have to use Velocity Macro, and merge this two html files into a single vm, that generates 2 outputs depending on a configuration.
i have been searching for methods to do this and I found this: http://www.roseindia.net/apachevelocity/macro-wrap-html.shtml
My question is do I need to build a Java fie just like in the link and then make a vm file, or can I just make a single vm file without making any java files?
if my question in unclear let me know I try to explain more.

The Java class shown there is just to demonstrate the template, and all the template does is demonstrate how to use the Velocity #macro directive.
IMO putting both HTML files into a single VM template is a bad idea, because it will be large and difficult to understand, modify, and debug. Instead, consider using the #parse or #include directives.
Alternatively, consider a mechanism at a higher level to serve the appropriate pages directly instead of pushing the template decision-making process into the templates themselves--this is arguably the best solution.

Related

Questionnaire tool to create config files

I have an application that needs a configuration file with several inputs which depend on the project that is going to be delivered. Things that are included in this conf file are IP's of databases, activating certain functions depending on the customer's needs, changing the values of some title screens, etc... A short example of a file could be something like:
postgresdb=192.156.98.98
transactions.enabled=true
application.name="client-1-logistics"
historicaldb=196.125.125.16
....
This files can become large and it might be difficult to find which parameters must be changed, specially if the configuration process has to be done by an external department.
I was looking into some kind of tool or framework that allows you to create some sort of questionnaire by which the user answers yes or no questions and fills out boxes with specific IP's or messages and get as a result the configuration file needed. This would be much tidier as you could group the questions into sections and has the potential of customising the configuration process with more context on the different parameters.
Does anyone know of such a framework?. How do you handle this kind of complex configuration processes?
The approach I outline below is not exactly what you are looking for, but it might provide some food for thought.
Use a template engine (example, Velocity, or any of the
several dozen listed in Wikipedia) to create a templated
version of your configuration file, containing lots of boilerplate
configuration that won't change, with the occasional
${variable_name} placeholder (the syntax for a placeholder will
vary from one template engine to another).
Write a small metadata file containing variable_name=value
settings.
Write a trivial program that: (a) parses the metadata file and loads
the variable_name=value settings into a Map (the template engine
might refer to the Map as, say, a context object); (b) uses the
template engine to parse the template file; (c)
merges/evaluates/instantiates the parsed template file with the settings in
the Map; and (d) writes the result to the target
configuration file.
You might be able to use steps 1 and 3 above without change. It is only step 2 that you need to adapt to your questionnaire requirements. Instead of a questionnaire, perhaps you could give users a document that explains how to write the metadata file.

Simple "server-side" HTML partials/templates/layouts?

I'm working with two students to produce a few HTML pages (a homepage and two secondary page layouts) that will later be implemented into a larger CMS.
I'd like to be able to abstract the shared HTML (head metadata, primary navigation, footer, etc.) into separate files so we only have to update them in a single place, execute a shell command to generate new, complete output. Since these pages are only ever going to become templates for another team, I don't even need to integrate any external data sources.
I know Jade would work for this but our partials/layouts/whatever need to look like HTML. I keep coming back to precompiling Handlebars templates but I'm not having much luck getting them to work.
Since we're using Foundation 5, Ruby and Node are already part of our toolchain. Suggestions?
I really like Middleman for this kind of thing. Layouts and partials and local data, etc. Wonderfully useful for doing front-end prototyping for what will eventually become a Rails application.

Pretty-print Lua source-code in external file, without embedding it in the HTML file

Since my experience with HTML is fairly rudimentary (and pretty old), I am not sure if my requirement is realistic.
Lets say that I have quite a few files containing Lua source-code, and all of them have the ".lua" extension and available in a particular subdirectory. What I'd like to do is create a static index.html file, which when loaded in a browser, would show the list of the lua source-code files in a drop-down. Once one of the source-code files is selected, I'd like that the file gets loaded into an "area" on the same page, and is pretty-printed, i.e. with syntax-highlighting in browser. I was wondering if I could use something like the google-code-prettyfy for the syntax-highlighting part ? Also, I am not clear if an external lua sourcecode file can be loaded, and displayed within a certain region of html page as being rendered. If yes, would appreciate elaboration on the how part.
A tool like LDoc can be used to accomplish a lot of what you want, much as Doxygen would be used for a C language source kit.
Both are heavily driven by inclusion of specially formatted comments that carry documentation.
I know Doxygen can fold source code into the generated document set, I don't recall about LDoc. Both are actively under development.
It isn't necessarily a bad idea to use both tools on a project, especially if you have C source code implementing Lua modules. You could use Doxygen to build the overall document tree for your engine and C modules, and LDoc to build documentation of the Lua parts. It should be possible with a little care and configuration of both tools to get them to play well together.

Objective-C - Parsing a .csv, extracting and inserting information, then displaying the .csv as an interface for editing

This question has been troubling me for the past week. Below, I will list my issue, and the research I have put into it.
The scenario: I was given a .csv file with 5000 rows and three columns. The three columns are defined as:
Site ID|Site Name|Site URL
My task: To create an HTML interface for the designers of the company to rate each site on a scale of 1-5.
My plan of action: I am a new hire. I am getting accustomed to the language I was hired for, which was Objective-C.
My algorithm for the project was to:
Parse the .csv
Remove the "Site Name" variable
Create a new .csv that contains the below variables: Site ID|Site URL|Rating|Image
Display the new .csv (with all aforementioned items) as an HTML page where there are toggles for "Ratings", which when pressed, will log the rating into the .csv which it was imported (or loaded) from.
The "Image" section I will be using a piece of software by the name of Paparazzi (on the Mac OS X operating system) which takes a fully formatted screenshot of the main page and saves it as a PNG file. I plan on using the file extension URL (which is stored locally) and load it into the "Image" column, thus when the designer clicks on the image, he is able to load the image that is stored locally.
My issue: As Objective-C is not entirely a scripting language, I am confused with some of the libraries I may need and/or methods I can implement this. I have the algorithm, but I am wholy unsure with the implementation.
My questions: If you have done a project similar to this before with Objective-C, what tips can you provide for me? How does one load the .csv as a HTML interface where upon edit, it will save this edit into the .csv? Will I need any servers for this, or is everything executable from just a machine? How do you grab an image (stored locally), extract its file extension, and load it onto the .csv?
The most important question: Is this achievable through Objective-C? My reasoning behind it is, I want to advance my knowledge of OC through a task like this. Yes, using Python is easier, but is it possible to do this with Objective-C?
Thank you.
It certainly is achievable, but I doubt you'd really want to go this way. If I understand it correctly, you want to serve the HTML page to others via web browser - that would mean either writing a (simple) http daemon, that would run on the server or writing a CGI script that would communicate with a standard http daemon. Python/PHP/Ruby do this for you readily, so there is much less room for possible errors.
As for
As Objective-C is not entirely a scripting language
I would perhaps rephrase it as
As Objective-C is entirely not a scripting language

Object-oriented HTML without server side code. Possible?

Is it possible to reuse HTML tags across multiple files, headers and footers for example? Placing them in separate files adds an extra HTTP request, that I'd like to avoid.
I don't want to replicate minor changes in headers and footers across every html file every time a change request comes along.
HTML is not a programming language - it's a markup language. You don't do object-oriented HTML because it isn't object based. This is the whole purpose of a server-side language, so you can make include files and use them in your server-side application.
If you have Apache however, you can use server-side includes which don't require a programming language such as PHP, but it's less flexible:
<!--#include virtual="/footer.html" -->
First, HTML isn't even a programming language, so it's impossible to have "Object-oriented" HTML.
Placing them in separate files adds an
extra HTTP request, that I'd like to
avoid.
If this is the reason for your "without server side code" requirement, then you are mistaken - the client does not fetch the templates that make up a page separately; the server side code will return a single HTML page to the client.
If, on the other hand, you don't have the option to run any server-side code at all and have to make do with static HTML pages, then there's only two options I can think of: iframes (which do result in separate HTTP requests, of course), or some sort of tool that basically runs the equivalent of server-side code to embed your reused templates everywhere and spits out the result to be uploaded to the server. You can have this effect by running a PHP/Apache-with-SSI/JSP/Whatever server on your development machine and using wget to make a static snapshot of the pages.
What I want to do is this. The files can be scattered during development. But I when I'm ready to release, a toolkit should compile the included files into a single html file.
You can use a template language/engine, such as jinja2.
You can layout files in a certain hierarchy, and have templates inherit from other templates, and include other templates, and define reusable macros (closest thing to what you referred to as "reusable tags").
What I want to do is this. The files can be scattered during development. But I when I'm ready to release, a toolkit should compile the included files into a single html file
I know this is late, but CodeKit's .kit language lets you do exactly what you were saying.
http://incident57.com/codekit/help.php
I think the language you've chosen in your question (object oriented HTML) is actually masking the real issue you have here...
What I want to do is this. The files can be scattered during development. But I when I'm ready to release, a toolkit should compile the included files into a single html file.
This sounds like a job for a preprocessor, I don't believe it has anything to do with your webserver or server side technology, as this is a step which would happen before deployment.
There's a number of text pre-processors available eg M4 - hell you could even use the C compiler pre-processor if you wanted. A quick google reveals that there are specialised pre-processors for HTML as well....
Automatic file inclusion, automatic escaping, and whatnot that can be done with automatically inserted headers and footers, chosen based on path patterns.
Seems to fit the bill?
Sure . But these would have to be separate ajax calls form the client . There are lot of javascript mvc frameworks like that do that .
If you want to have include files during development, then compile them into free-standing HTML files, you could do that by spidering your development server with wget: whatever server-side technology you use will combine the files and return the HTML, which wget will saves as one file.
As everithing is object over the technology but not directly, indirectly interacting with the object that are created at different level as per security implementation.
You can do this.
I just released a mature framework called Hypertag that is, in fact, Object Oriented HTML. It is entirely client-side, in continuous development, and allows for very interesting, yet HTML-compatible, advanced solutions for logic and layout.
See http://hypertag.io for more.