Using Scripting and Templating Languages

Often many people require ability to create a "clever" template - e.g. write piece of simple text and at the time of its processing do some advanced changes to it using either scripting or templating languages.

This traditionally used to be a bit complicated task, however since version 6.1 there are new interfaces can be registered as a services in a lookup and it is reponsible for handling the whole copy of the template file(s) to the destination folder. and can be registered as a services in a lookup and it is reponsible for providing "hints" - e.g. map mapping strings to various objects. and these interfaces allow anyone to extend the behaviour during creation of new files without writing new DataLoader and co.

Smart Templating Quick How-To
First of all create a file in your module layer located somewhere under the Templates/ folder. Make it a template by adding <attr name="template" boolvalue="true"/>. Associate this template with a scripting language, for example by <attr name="javax.script.ScriptEngine" stringvalue="freemarker"/>. Now make sure that the scripting language integration is also available by requesting a token in standard format, for freemarker just put OpenIDE-Module-Needs: javax.script.ScriptEngine.freemarker in your manifest. Also create a runtime dependency on org.netbeans.modules.templates - the module providing the templates/scripting languages integration. This tells the NetBeans module system that a module providing integration with such scripting engine has to be enabled. Now you can use regular script language tags inside of your template file. When you write your instantiate method in your wizard, you can create a Map<String,Object> and fill it with parameters collected from your wizard and then pass it to CreateFromTemplate(targetFolder, targetName, mapWithParameters) . This will invoke the scripting language and make the mapWithParameters values available to it. Beyond this there is few standard parameters predefined including name, user, date and time and also additional parameters are collected from all registered CreateFromTemplateAttributesProviders.

Moreover there is a built in support for scripting languages in the standard NetBeans IDE. If a template is annotated with a property that can be associated to templates that either should return real instance of ScriptEngine interface or a String name of the engine that is then used to search for it in the javax.script.ScriptEngineManager. Usually the freemarker engine is the one that is supported by the NetBeans IDE - if your module wants to use it then include a token dependency OpenIDE-Module-Needs: javax.script.ScriptEngine.freemarker in your manifest file (also accessible through project customizer GUI) to indicate to the system that you need it. then the scripting engine is then used to process the template and generate the output file. While running the engine one can rely on few predefined properties:

• contains the name of the DataObject that is being created
• contains String representing the current day like 23. 3. 2007
• contains String the current time like 17:18:30

Other properties can indeed be provided by CreateFromTemplateAttributesProviders. After processing, the output is also sent to appropriate org.openide.text.IndentEngine associated with the mime type of the template, for formating.

How to add action to folder's popup menu?

    <folder name="Loaders" >
        <folder name="folder" >
            <folder name="any" >
                <folder name="Actions" >
                    <file name="org-mymodule-MyAction.instance" >
                        <attr name="instanceCreate" stringvalue="org.mymodule.MyAction" />
                    </file>
                </folder>
            </folder>
        </folder>
    </folder>
    

In version 5.8 all the standard loaders were changed to read actions from layer:

• The actions that the standard XML loader shows in its popup menu are read from a layer folder Loaders/text/xml/Actions
• The actions that the loader for unrecognized files shows in its popup menu are read from a layer folder Loaders/content/unknown/Actions
• The actions that the loader for instance and settings files shows in its popup menu are read from a layer folder Loaders/application/x-nbsettings/Actions

How to allow others to enhance actions of your loader?